Inside the Kronos malware – part 2

In the previous part of the Kronos analysis, we took a look at the installation process of Kronos and explained the technical details of the tricks that this malware uses in order to remain more stealthy. Now we will move on to look at the malicious actions that Kronos can perform. Analyzed sampl...

Unauthorized data access vulnerability in macOS is detailed by Microsoft

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team disclosed details about a macOS vulnerability, dubbed "HM Surf," that could allow an attacker to gain access to the user’s data in Safari. The data the attacker could access without users’ consent includes browsed pages, along with the device’s camera,...

Ransomware review: November 2023

This article is based on research by Marcelo Rivero, Malwarebytes ransomware specialist, who monitors information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web sites. In this report, "known attacks" are those where the victim did not pay a ransom. This provides the best overall picture of...

Rubrik is latest victim of the Clop ransomware zero-day campaign

Rubrik, a cybersecurity company specializing in cloud data management, has revealed that some of its systems were infiltrated by the Clop ransomware group. Rubrik is one of many companies attacked by Clop via an infamous zero-day vulnerability in the GoAnywhere file transfer software. The attack...

A week in security (September 19 – 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Hookup site targeted by typo-squatters American Airlines suffers data breach after phishing incident Grand Theft Auto 6 suffers grand theft EDR vs MDR vs XDR - Whats the Difference? Scammers send fake 'Energy Bills Support Scheme' texts Tax refund phish logs...

ChromeOS vulnerability found by Microsoft

Microsoft recently released a report about a ChromeOS remote memory corruption vulnerability. The issue has already been fixed. In fact, it was reported to Google in April. The fix was applied shortly after, and released on June 15. The resulting deep-dive from Microsoft is a fascinating look at...

Has your WordPress site been backdoored by a skimmer?

Skimmers and other threat actors are backdooring websites, and WordPress instances in particular, according to a recently released report. Researchers at Sucuri say attackers have developed methods to make sure that their grip on the infected site is not easily removed by applying the next update...

Explosive technology and 3D printers: a history of deadly devices

Hackers: They’ll turn your computer into a BOMB! "Hackers turning computers into bombs" is a now legendary headline, taken from the Weekly World News. It has rather set the bar for "people will murder you with computers" anxiety. Even those familiar with the headline may not have dug into the sto...

A week in security (August 26 – September 1)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we analysed the Android xHelper trojan, we wondered why the Nextdoor app would send out letters on behalf of their customers, reported about a study that explores the clickjacking problem across top Alexa-ranked websites, wondered how to get the board to invest in...

Cooperating apps and automatic permissions are setting you up for failure

“Hey you. Someone from HR has invited you to a meeting on Thursday. Would you like me to add the appointment to the calendar?” Receiving an email notification when someone has invited you to a meeting is a feature that many professionals would not like to miss. Being able to log in at certain sit...

NIST’s privacy framework lets privacy tell its own story

Online privacy remains unsolved. Congress prods at it, some companies fumble with it while a small handful excel, and the public demands it. But one government agency is trying to bring everyone together to fix it. As the Senate sits on no fewer than four data privacy bills that their own members...

A week in security (February 4 – 8)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a closer look at the technical and reputational challenges for Facebook as it tries to integrate secure messaging across Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. We explored Google’s latest attempts to change how the public sees—literally—web browser URLs, gave...

Breaches, breaches everywhere, it must be the season

After last weeks shocker from Marriott this week started off with disclosures about breaches at Quora, Dunkin’ Donuts, and 1-800-Flowers. Quora Quora is an online community that focuses on asking and answering questions. It was founded in 2009 by two former Facebook employees. The stolen data may...

ESTA registration websites still lurk in paid ads on Google

Google has taken direct action against adverts promoting ESTA registration services, often offered by third parties at highly inflated prices. Ads displayed on the Google network shouldn’t display fees higher than what a public source or government charges for products or services. This tightenin...

A week in security (July 24 – July 30)

Last week, we recognized one of the unsung heroes of our times, explained what the Dark Web is, revealed challenges one of our experienced when putting together his conference presentation for SteelCon, revealed the potential dangers of smart toys to kids, and made a prediction following the...

QNAP warns about critical vulnerabilities in NAS systems

QNAP has published a security advisory about two critical vulnerabilities that could allow remote attackers to execute commands via a network. One of the vulnerabilities affects the QTS and QuTS operating systems OS for QNAP’s network attached storage systems NAS. The second one can be found in...

Reducing your attack surface is more effective than playing patch-a-mole

On June 13, 2023 the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA issued Binding Operational Directive BOD 23-02. BOD 23-02 is titled Mitigating the Risk from Internet-Exposed Management Interfaces, and requires federal civilian agencies to remove specific networked management interfaces...

Silence is golden partner for Truebot and Clop ransomware

A recent rise in the number of Truebot infections has been attributed to a threat actor known as the Silence Group. The Silence Group is an initial access broker IAB that frequently changes tools and tactics to stay on top of the game. An IAB's primary task is to find a weakness or vulnerability,...

Update now! Chrome patches ANOTHER zero-day vulnerability

Google has released version 103.0.5060.114 for Chrome, now available in the Stable Desktop channel worldwide. The main goal of this new version is to patch CVE-2022-2294. CVE-2022-2294 is a high severity heap-based buffer overflow weakness in the Web Real-Time Communications WebRTC component whic...

[updated]Unpatched Atlassian Confluence vulnerability is actively exploited

Researchers found a vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence by conducting an incident response investigation. Atlassian rates the severity level of this vulnerability as critical. Atlassian has issued a security advisory and is working on a fix for the affected products. This qualifies the...

F5 BIG-IP vulnerability is now being used to disable servers

As we reported a few days ago, a F5 BIG-IP vulnerability listed as CVE-2022-1388 is actively being exploited. But now researchers have noticed that attackers arent just taking control of the vulnerable servers but also making them unusable by destroying the device’s file system. F5 BIG-IP The...

Italian mafia cybercrime sting leads to 100+ arrests

The Spanish National Police Policía Nacional has successfully dismantled an organized crime ring of hundreds of members in a sting operation supported by Europol, the Italian National Police Polizia di Stato, and Eurojust. This is the end result of a year-long investigation. The organized crime...

ACCESS Act might improve data privacy through interoperability

Data privacy is back in Congressional lawmakers’ sights, as a new, legislative proposal focuses not on data collection, storage, and selling, but on the idea that Americans should be able to more easily pack up their user data and take it to a competing service—perhaps one that better respects...

New iOS exploit checkm8 allows permanent compromise of iPhones

UPDATE 9/27, 11:00am: Updated for the misconception that the bootrom was actually being modified. Apparently, the "permanent" only refers to the fact that the bug is in the bootrom, where it cannot be patched. UPDATE 9/27, 12:15am: After speaking with @axi0m8, clarified a few other points,...

Mozilla launches Firefox Send for private file sharing

Mozilla look to reclaim some ground from the all-powerful Chrome with a new way to send and receive files securely from inside the browser. Firefox Send first emerged in 2017, promising an easy way to send documents without fuss. The training wheels have now come off and Send is ready to go...

A week in security (March 4 – 11)

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs released its in-depth, international data privacy survey of nearly 4,000 individuals, revealing that every generation, including Millennials, cares about online privacy. We also covered a novel case of zombie email that involved a very much alive account user, delved...

Christmas tech scams roundup

There’s a fair few Christmas tech scams floating around out there as 2018 winds up, and we thought it’d be a good time to warn you about them. It’s the usual mish-mash of phone antics, social media shenanigans, and click bait. Shall we begin? This scam looks divine BOOM reports on a collection of...

A week in security (December 3 – 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we gave readers an FYI on multiple breaches that affected Humble Bundle, Quora, and Dunkin' Donuts, to name a few. This follows the announcement from Marriott about a four-year-long breach that impacted half a billion of its patrons. We also pushed out the report,...

Why Malwarebytes decided to participate in AV testing

Starting this month, Malwarebytes began participating in the antivirus software for Windows comparison test performed by AV-test.org. This is uncharted territory for us, as we have refrained from participating in these types of tests since our inception. Although recent testing results show...

Spoofed addresses and anonymous sending: new Gmail bugs make for easy pickings

Tim Cotten, a software developer from Washington, DC, was responding to a request for help from a female colleague last week, who believed that her Gmail account has been hacked, when he discovered something phishy. The evidence presented was several emails in her Sent folder, purportedly sent by...

My precious: security, privacy, and smart jewelry

Emery was staring at her computer screen for almost an hour, eyes already lackluster as the full-page ad on Motiv looped once more. She was contemplating whether she'd give in and get her boyfriend Ben a new fitness tracker as a present for his upcoming marathon. The phone app he was currently...

Compromising vital infrastructure: how voting machines and elections are vulnerable

In our first post in a series about vital infrastructure, we aim to explore how secure our voting machines—and our votes in general—are ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. Here, we ask ourselves: How can our infrastructure be compromised? What are the consequences, and how can we prevent...

How to build your own motion-activated security camera

Attention makers! Are you looking for a challenging project that not only gets your gears grinding but helps to keep you secure while traveling? Welcome to the build-your-own security camera tutorial. The impetus for this project originated from events that took place at Defcon 26, where hotel...

Why tech companies wanted Senate Bill 315 vetoed

When Georgia Senate Bill 315 SB-315 was introduced, people in the tech world anxiously awaited its fate, regardless of their geographic location. They knew that some laws initially restricted to single states become more widespread after politicians set precedents. And they knew that this law cou...

Tech support scammers GeeksHelp caught again, two years later

Many researchers have noted an increase in tech support scam activity during the past few months. This trend, facilitated by browser lockers, is not surprising considering that other web-based infection methods are not as effective. While people are still receiving cold calls from alleged Microso...

Keychain vulnerability in macOS

On Monday, Patrick Wardle, a respected security researcher at Synack and owner of Objective-See, sent a tweet about a keychain vulnerability he had found in macOS High Sierra. As his tweet showed, it is possible for a malicious app to extract, and then exfiltrate, keychain data from High Sierra,...

Back to school cybersecurity tips for parents and kids

The time to start the new school term is just around the corner. And for parents, the excitement and anxiety may be palpable, especially if it's their kid's first time attending a new school. Ads for back-to-school gear start as early as July, increasing in frequency and urgency until the kiddos...

Truist bank confirms data breach

On Wednesday June 12, 2024, a well-known dark web data broker and cybercriminal acting under the name "Sp1d3r" offered a significant amount of data allegedly stolen from Truist Bank for sale. Truist is a US bank holding company and operates 2,781 branches in 15 states and Washington DC. By assets...

Active Nitrogen campaign delivered via malicious ads for PuTTY, FileZilla

In the past couple of weeks, we have observed an ongoing campaign targeting system administrators with fraudulent ads for popular system utilities. The malicious ads are displayed as sponsored results on Googles search engine page and localized to North America. Victims are tricked into downloadi...

Ransomware in December 2022

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their dark web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom. Lockbit has rebounded from i...

InfraGard infiltrated by cybercriminal

InfraGard, a partnership between the FBI and members of the private sector that was established to protect critical infrastructure in the US, has been infiltrated by a cybercriminal. As a result, its database of contact information is now for sale on an English-language cybercrime forum. InfraGar...

Rackspace confirms it suffered a ransomware attack

It's not been a great week for cloud computing service provider Rackspace. On December 2, customers began experiencing problems connecting and logging into their Exchange environments. Rackspace started investigating and discovered an issue that affected its Hosted Exchange environments. Now...

Update now! Emergency fix for Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine zero-day flaw released

On Friday, December 2, Google rolled out an out-of-band patch for an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability in its V8 JavaScript engine. The flaw could allow attackers to cause a system crash or execute potentially malicious code. That means you'll want to update Chrome to patch against this...

Apple releases security update for iPhones and iPads to address vulnerability

Apple has released a security update for iOS 12.5.6 to patch a remotely exploitable WebKit vulnerability that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on unpatched devices. The WebKit zero-day that is known as CVE-2022-32893 was fixed for iOS 15.6.1, iPadOS 15.6, and macOS Monterey 12.5.1 on...

Apple’s search for child abuse imagery raises serious privacy questions

The Internet has been on fire since the August 4 discovery disclosed publicly by Mathew Green that Apple will be monitoring photos uploaded to iCloud for child sexual abuse material CSAM. Some see this as a great move by Apple that will protect children. Others view this as a potentially dangerou...

Polazert Trojan using poisoned Google Search results to spread

Trojan.Polazert aka SolarMarker has gone back and fine-tuned an old tactic known as SEO-poisoning to plant their Remote Access Trojan RAT on as many systems as possible. This RAT runs in memory and is used by attackers to install additional malware on affected systems. Trojan.Polazert...

A week in security (May 24 -30)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs we discussed VPN Android apps, how even the FBI has to deal with insider threats, Chromes Incognito mode, new rules for critical infrastructure spurred by the Colonial Pipeline attack, how to delete your Twitter account, what encryption is, how healthcare service...

How social media platforms mine personal data for profit

It’s almost impossible not to rely on social networks in some way, whether for personal reasons or business. Sites such as LinkedIn continue to blur the line, increasing the amount of social function over time with features and services resembling less formal sites, such as Facebook. Can anyone...

Google Maps: online interventions with offline ramifications

The places where online life directly intersection with that lived offline will be forever fascinating, illustrated perfectly through a recent performance piece involving Google Maps, a cart, and an awful lot of mobile phones. Simon Weckert, an artist based in Berlin, Germany, showed how a little...

Browser Guard combats privacy abuse, tracking, clickbait, and scammers

In July 2018, we introduced the Malwarebytes Browser Extension, a beta plugin for Firefox and Chrome aimed at delivering a safer, faster, and more private browsing experience. Our extension blocked tech support scams, hijackers, pop-up ads, trackers, and more to keep users secure and free from...