7 tips to stay cyber safe this summer

You’ve probably already seen the back-to-school ads on TV and rolled your eyes a little bit. We’re with you: There’s still plenty of summer left. That’s why we want to remind you about some of the cybersecurity pitfalls you might encounter during the remainder of the summer season. Whether you’re...

Kothamine malware uses Tailscale’s tailcat to evade network detection

We discovered an undocumented remote-access Trojan RAT called Kothamine Agent. It supports more than 30 commands and it gives attackers control of an infected Windows computer: they can run commands, read and change files, and add new capabilities. Some versions can also steal browser data and...

CISA urges urgent patching of two actively exploited Citrix NetScaler vulnerabilities

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has added two Citrix NetScaler vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and it has set the “due date” a week after they were added. Federal Civilian Executive Branch FCEB agencies are handed specific deadlines for wh...

Microsoft patches 34 vulnerabilities, including one zero-day

December’s Patch Tuesday is a relatively quiet one on the Microsoft front. Redmond has patched 34 vulnerabilities with only four rated as critical. One vulnerability, a previously disclosed unpatched vulnerability in AMD central processing units CPUs, was shifted by AMD to software developers. Th...

The mystery of the CVEs that are not vulnerabilities

A researcher specializing in Software Supply Chain security named Dan Lorenc recently raised an interesting topic on LinkedIn. 138 new vulnerabilities in open-source projects were all entered the same day to the CVE database. To understand what the problem is there are a few things youll need to...

Ransomware review: August 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...

Update VPN Plus Server now! Synology patches vulnerability with a CVSS of 10

Synology has issued an advisory about a vulnerability that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands through a susceptible version of Synology VPN Plus Server. VPN Plus Server VPN Plus Server allows users to turn their Synology Router into a Virtual Rrivate Network VPN server. A VPN...

A Chrome fix for an in-the-wild exploit is out—Check your version

Google has announced an update for Chrome that fixes an in-the-wild exploit. Chrome Stable channel has been updated to 107.0.5304.87 for Mac and Linux, and 107.0.5304.87/.88 for Windows. The vulnerability at hand is described as a type confusion issue in the V8 Javascript engine. Mitigation If...

A week in security (Nov 29 – Dec 5)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: CronRAT targets Linux servers with e-commerce attacks Hackers all over the world are targeting Tasmania’s emergency services Massive faceprint scraping company Clearview AI hauled over the coals Most people aren’t upgrading to Windows 11: Not the end of the world...

A week in security (Nov 22 – Nov 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs How to defend your website against card skimmers Security researchers play peek-a-boo with Conti ransomware server Windows 10 chills out, gives sysadmins a break Please dont buy this! 3 gift card scams to watch out for this Black Friday Millions of GoDaddy customer...

Cyberbullying 101: A Primer for kids, teens, and parents

At some point in our lives, we have likely either been bullied, stood back and watched others bullying, or participated in the act. Playing the role of offender, offended, and by-stander has become easier, thanks to the Internet and the technologies that make it possible to keep up connected. In...

A week in security (April 12 – 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, our podcast featured Troy Hunt, Chloé Messdaghi, and Tanya Janca who discussed security fatigue with us. We announced the release of the Malwarebytes SMB Cybersecurity Trust & Confidence Report 2021, a first-of-its-kind survey of the hardworking IT professionals on...

Fake Trezor app steals more than $1 million worth of crypto coins

Several users of Trezor, a small hardware device that acts as a cryptocurrency wallet, have been duped by a fake app with the same name. The app was available on Google Play and Apple’s App Store and also claimed to be from SatoshiLabs, the creators of Trezor. According to the Washington Post, th...

Perkiler malware turns to SMB brute force to spread

Researchers at Guardicore have identified a new infection vector being used by the Perkiler malware where internet-facing Windows machines are breached through SMB password brute force. Perkiler is a complex Windows malware with rootkit components that is dropped by the Purple Fox exploit kit EK...

VideoBytes: Offensive security tools and the bad guys that use them

Hello Folks! In this Videobyte, we’re talking about what penetration testing tools malware gangs love to use and why they are better than what you can get on the black market. This article describes the VirusBulletin talk of a security researcher from Interzer Labs, Paul Litvak, in which he...

Coronavirus impacts security conferences and events: check your schedule

With coronavirus starting to take hold globally, international travel restrictions are kicking in and more workplaces are advising to work from home whenever possible. When self-isolation is a potential solution, public gatherings are increasingly looking like a terrible idea. Events are becoming...

A week in security (January 13 – 19)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we taught you how to prevent a rootkit attack, explained what data enrichment means, informed you about new rules on deepfakes in the US, and demonstrated how backdoors in elastic servers expose private data. Other cybersecurity news An online group of cybersecurit...

The little-known ways mobile device sensors can be exploited by cybercriminals

The bevy of mobile device sensors in modern smartphones and tablets make them more akin to pocket-sized laboratories and media studios than mere communication devices. Cameras, microphones, accelerometers, and gyroscopes give incredible flexibility to app developers and utility to mobile device...

There’s an app for that: web skimmers found on PaaS Heroku

Criminals love to abuse legitimate services—especially platform-as-a-service Paas cloud providers—as they are a popular and reliable hosting commodity used to support both business and consumer ventures. Case in point, in April 2019 we documented a web skimmer served on code repository GitHub...

Here are the most popular robocall scams and how to avoid them

We recently examined how robocall scams are a serious threat to privacy, alongside the astonishing rate at which their volume continues to increase. Forty-three billion calls in 2019 with an average of 131 calls per person in the US alone is not something to be sniffed at. No matter how careful y...

A week in security (July 29 – August 4)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs we discussed the security and privacy changes in Android Q, how to get your Equifax money and stay safe doing it, and we looked at the strategy of getting a board of directors to invest in government cybersecurity. We also reviewed how a Capital One breach exposed...

Enterprise incident response: getting ahead of the wave

Enterprise defenders have a tough job. In contrast to small businesses, large enterprise can have thousands of endpoints, legacy hardware from mergers and acquisitions, and legacy apps that are business critical and prevent timely patching. Add to that a deluge of indicators and metadata from the...

Information operations on Twitter: new data released on election tampering

Back in April, we talked about the wealth of options available to Russian hackers and others launching social engineering campaigns, whether on social networks or through clever attacks launched via Advanced Persistent Threats. Some of that was information published by Twitter at the time in...

Reversing malware in a custom format: Hidden Bee elements

Malware can be made of many components. Often, we encounter macros and scripts that work as malicious downloaders. Some functionalities can also be achieved by position-independent code—so-called shellcode. But when it comes to more complex elements or core modules, we almost take it for granted...

A week in security (July 30 – August 5)

Last week, we posted a roundup of spam that may have landed in your mailbox, talked about what makes us susceptible to social engineering tactics, and took a deep dive into big data. Other news: Facebook claimed to have removed accounts that display behavior consistent with possible Russian actor...

Maybe you shouldn’t use LinkedIn

UPDATE: 4/6/2018 LinkedIn reached out for comment on the article, and we'd like to clarify our position based on their concerns. They wrote: Members control their connections, who can see them including keeping them private if they wish and only first degree connections can get access to your...

Malvertising on Equifax, TransUnion tied to third party script (updated)

Update 10-16-2017: More information regarding the third-party script fireclick.js and the domain it contacted netflame.cc was revealed by the Wall Street Journal. That domain once was used by Digital River Inc., an e-commerce and digital-marketing vendor, for a now-defunct web-analytics product...

Make way for the GDPR: Is your business ready?

In Week 2 of National Cyber Security Awareness Month NCSAM, the spotlight is on businesses—particularly, their more profound need to take cybersecurity seriously in this age of breaches. And what better way for them to start this off than to think about how they can improve on handling and storin...

Adware the series, the final: Tools section

So far in this series, we have handed you some methods to recognize and remediate adware. We used this diagram as a guideline. During this journey, we have touched upon several free tools that we used to get some insight on what type of infection we were dealing with and where the adware could be...

Signal users targeted in backup-stealing phishing attacks

A new phishing campaign is targeting Signal users by attempting to steal their backup recovery keys to access encrypted message archives. The attack is initiated by a text message pretending to come from Signal Support. “Action Required: Data Recovery Needed Your Signal account data message and...

Passwords in the age of AI: We need to find alternatives

For decades, passwords have been our default method for keeping online accounts safe. But in the age of artificial intelligence, this traditional security method is facing challenges it was never built to withstand. A team at Cybernews conducted a study of over 19 billion newly exposed passwords...

SMS scammers use toll fees as a lure

In April 2024, the FBI warned about a new type of smishing scam. Smishing is the term we use for phishing attacks sent via text message. This particular smishing scam tries to trick users into clicking a link by telling them they owe a “small amount” in toll fees. The scammers send a text claimin...

Update your iPhones and iPads now: Apple patches security vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS

Apple has released a security update for iOS and iPadOS to patch two zero-day vulnerabilities which are reported to already have been exploited. Zero-day vulnerabilities are discovered by attackers before the software company itself - meaning the vendor has zero days to fix them. Both the two...

Update now! SysAid vulnerability is actively being exploited by ransomware affiliate

Users of SysAid on-premises should take action to deal with a vulnerability. SysAid is a widely used IT service management solution that allows IT teams to manage tasks. Microsoft discovered an ongoing exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in the SysAid IT support software in limited attacks b...

US dangles $10 million reward for information about Cl0p ransomware gang

The US Department of States national security rewards program, Rewards for Justice RFJ, is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information linking the Cl0p ransomware gang, or any other malicious cyber actors targeting US critical infrastructure, to a foreign government. Advisory from...

Update now! Apple issues patches for three actively used zero-days

Apple has rolled out security updates for Safari 16.5, watchOS 9.5, tvOS 16.5, iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, iOS 15.7.6, iPadOS 15.7.6, macOS Big Sur 11.7.7, macOS Ventura 13.4, and macOS Monterey 12.6.6. Among the security updates were patches for three actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities. All...

Introducing Quarantine for Cloud Storage Scanning in Nebula

Were excited to announce Quarantine for Malwarebytes Cloud Storage Scanning CSS, a new feature which allows you to automatically quarantine threats found in your cloud storage repositories. Malwarebytes Cloud Storage Scanning is an add-on service in Nebula that scans for malware on cloud storage...

Adware found on Google Play — PDF Reader serving up full screen ads

A PDF reader found on Google Play with over one million downloads is aggressively displaying full screen ads, even when the app is not in use. More specifically, the reader is known as PDF reader - documents viewer, package name com.document.pdf.viewer. As a result, this aggressive behavior lands...

Extortionists target restaurants, demand money to take down bad reviews

Restaurants and other eating establishments are being targeted by extortionists who post fake reviews online and then offer to remove them in exchange for a gift card. The possibility has always existed to leave poor reviews on Google Maps and elsewhere. However, seeing fraudsters get organised a...

Ransomware: April 2022 review

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team monitors the threat landscape continuously and produces monthly ransomware reports based on a mixture of proprietary and open-source intelligence. April 2022 was most notable for the emergence of three new ransomware-as-a-service RaaS groups—Onyx, Mindwar...

Is your web browser vulnerable to data theft? XS-Leak explained

In recent news, IT security researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum RUB and the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences have disclosed 14 new cross-site leak also known as XSLeak or XS-Leak attacks that can affects modern browsers, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and...

What is fileless malware?

Unlike traditional malware, which relies on a file being written to a disk, fileless malware is intended to be memory resident only, ideally leaving no trace after its execution. The malicious payload exists in the computer’s memory, which means nothing is ever written directly to the hard drive...

Crypto-scams you should be steering clear of in 2021

A fair few cryptocurrency scams have been doing the rounds across 2021. Most of them are similar if not identical to tactics used in previous years with an occasional twist. Here’s some of the most visible ones you should be steering clear of. Recovery code theft Many Bitcoin wallets make use of...

Microsoft exec reveals “routine” secrecy orders from government investigators

Microsoft executive Tom Burt told Congressional lawmakers Wednesday that Federal law enforcement agencies send “routine” secret orders for customer information from the Seattle-based company, numbering anywhere from 2,400 to 3,500 such requests a year. “While the recent news about secret...

Cobalt Strike, a penetration testing tool abused by criminals

If you were to compose a list of tools and software developed by security and privacy defenders that ended up being abused by the bad guys, then Cobalt Strike would unfortunately be near the top of the list. Maybe only Metasploit could give it a run for the first place ranking. Metasploit—probabl...

A week in security (April 26 – May 2)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we looked at which age range is most likely to be targeted by online predators, talked to Malwarebytes CISO John Donovan on our Lock and Code podcast, and explored the latest deepfake happenings. We also dug into a supply chain attack, discussed threats from a...

A week in security (March 29 – April 4)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, our podcast featured Malwarebytes senior security researcher JP Taggart, who talked to us about why you need to trust your VPN. You’ve likely heard the benefits of using a VPN: You can watch TV shows restricted to certain countries, you can encrypt your web traffic...

Teen behind 2020 Twitter hack pleads guilty

The so-called “mastermind” behind the 2020 Twitter hack that compromised the accounts of several celebrities and public figures—including President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk—pleaded guilty to several charges on Tuesday in a Florida court. As part of an agreed-upon plea deal with...

What Google learned from 1 billion evil email scams

Google and researchers at Stanford University have released an in-depth study analysing 5 months of phishing / malware mails sent globally. "Who is targeted by email-based phishing and malware? Measuring factors that differentiate risk" looked at more than a billion mails. The results were then f...

Update your iOS now! Apple patches three zero-day vulnerabilities

Apple has patched three vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS that were actively being exploited in targeted attacks. Vulnerabilities that are being exploited in the wild without a patch being available are referred to as zero-days. The vulnerabilities were found and disclosed by Google’s Project Zer...