What is real-time protection and why do you need it?

The constant barrage of cyber threats can be overwhelming for all of us. And, as those threats evolve and attackers find new ways to compromise us, we need a way to keep on top of everything nasty that’s thrown our way. Malwarebytes’ free version tackles and reactively resolves threats already on...

Meta to abandon social media tracking tool CrowdTangle

On 14 March, Meta announced it would abandon CrowdTangle, saying the tool will no longer be available after August 14, 2024. While most people have never heard of CrowdTangle, among journalists the tool is considered essential. Its popularity largely depends on the ability to monitor social media...

CISA: Disconnect vulnerable Ivanti products TODAY

In an emergency directive, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has ordered all federal agencies to disconnect all instances of Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure solution products from agency networks no later than 11:59PM on Friday February 2, 2024. Besides the Ivanti...

SupremeBot and Mario cross the finish line together

Researchers have reported how popular game installers like Super Mario Games are being used to deliver malware. The malicious components include cryptominers, the SupremeBot mining client, and the open-source Umbral stealer. The game installers route offers some very distinct advantages to the...

Ransomware review: June 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 didn't pay a ransom. This provides the best overall picture of...

Smart home assistants at risk from "NUIT" ultrasound attack

A new form of attack named "Near Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan" NUIT has been unveiled by researchers from the University of Texas. NUIT is designed to attack voice assistants with malicious commands remotely via the internet. Impacted assistants include Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant...

Android 14 developer preview highlights multiple security improvements

Android developers have been given a taste of whats to come in the next big step up in mobile land, thanks to Android 14 waiting on the horizon. The developer preview is a great way for those most familiar with the mobile operating system to see which changes theyll enjoy and what ones theyll hav...

Education hammered by exploits and backdoors in 2021 and 2022

In May of 2021, education underwent a siege of exploit attempts using the vulnerability CVE-2021-21551, which exploits a Dell system driver bug and helps attackers to gain access to a network. Considering that many schools across the United States use Dell hardware, its understandable to see such...

Infamous dark net carding site UniCC to close

UniCC, the largest site on the dark web that sells credit card and debit card information, will close up shop for good, taking its affiliate site, LuxSocks, with it, too. According to Elliptic, a company that offers risk solutions for cryptoassets, the unknown UniCC administrators have made an...

Please don’t buy this! 3 gift card scams to watch out for this holiday season

With the holiday season around the corner, we thought it was a good time to look at the dangers that come with gift cards. Gift cards can be an easy win in cases where you don’t know the receiver well enough to decide on a fitting gift, or when their wishes are out of your price range. But there...

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...

What is Tor?

Tor, The Onion Router Tor The Onion Router is free software used to keep your online communications safe and secure from outside observers. It’s designed to block tracking and eavesdropping, resist fingerprinting where services tie your browser and device information to an identity, and to hide t...

Beware, crypto-scammer seeks foreigner with BLOCK CHAIN ACCOUNT

We’ve observed a 419-style scam also known as an advance fee scam which combines the promise of cryptocurrency riches with WhatsApp conversation. The mail, which arrived with the subject "Urgent respond", begins as follows: Greetings to you my friend, My name is Haifa Kalfan, I am the Store manag...

Police seize DoubleVPN data, servers, and domain

A coordinated effort between global law enforcement agencies—led by the Dutch National Police—shut down a VPN service that was advertised on cybercrime forums. The VPN company promised users the ability to double- and triple-encrypt their web traffic to obscure their location and identity. The...

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...

Ransomware group threatens to leak information about police informants

UPDATE 12:12 PM Pacific Time, April 28: As of at least 9:40 AM Pacific Time, the Babuk ransomware gang removed any reference to the allegedly stolen DC Police Department data from its data leak website. This does not indicate with any certainty that the DC Police Department paid Babuk, but it is...

Password manager hijacked to deliver malware in supply chain attack

In the latest example of a supply chain attack, cybercriminals delivered malware to customers of the business password manager Passwordstate by breaching its developer’s networks and then deploying a fraudulent update last week, said Passwordstate’s maker, Click Studios. Though the number of...

SearchDimension search hijackers: An overview of developments

Background information on SearchDimension SearchDimension is the name of a family of browser hijackers that makes money from ad clicks and search engine revenues. The family was named after the domain searchdimension.com that popped up in 2017, and they still sometimes use the letter combo SD in...

File-sharing and cloud storage sites: How safe are they?

There it is again—that annoying message that pops up when your email client informs you that a file is too big to attach. Those of us that are confronted with this problem on a regular basis—and those of us that want to attach files that could get picked up by anti-malware scanners along the...

Keeping ransomware cash away from your business

A ransomware gang has made headlines for donating a big chunk of stolen funds to two charities. Two separate donations given to Children International and The Water Project rang tills to the tune of $10,000 each. Their reason was that they’re targeting “only large profitable corporations, we thin...

Malspam campaign caught using GuLoader after service relaunch

They say any publicity is good publicity. But perhaps this isnt true for CloudEye, an Italian firm that claims to provide "the next generation of Windows executables protection". First described by Proofpoint security researchers in March 2020, GuLoader is a downloader used by threat actors to...

Are our police forces equipped to deal with modern cybercrimes?

“You should have asked for the presence of a digital detective,” Karen said when I told her what happened at the police station. I had accompanied a neighbor, who is a small business owner, that had been hit with ransomware and wanted to file a report. After listening to his story, the police...

Spelevo exploit kit debuts new social engineering trick

2019 has been a busy year for exploit kits, despite the fact that they haven't been considered a potent threat vector for years, especially on the consumer side. This time, we discovered the Spelevo exploit kit with its virtual pants down, attempting to capitalize on the popularity of adult...

A week in security (October 28 – November 3)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we celebrated the birth of the Internet 50 years ago, highlighted reports about the US Federal Trade Commission FTC filing a case against stalkerware developer Retina-X, issued a PSI on disaster donation scams, looked at the top cybersecurity challenged SMBs face,...

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...

Five easy ways to recognize and dispose of malicious emails

I suppose we all get our share of spam. Some more than others. But how do we differentiate between simple commercial spam and the types of emails that want to get us in trouble? The unsolicited commercial spam email is generally easy to recognize, report, and discard, but what about more dangerou...

SEO poisoning: Is it worth it?

Search Engine Optimization SEO poisoning basically comes down to getting your web page high in the rankings for relevant search results without buying advertisements or using legitimate, but tedious, SEO best practices. Instead, threat actors use illegal means to push their page to the top...

Presenting: Malwarebytes Labs 2017 State of Malware Report

2017 was a tumultuous year in politics, media, gender, race—and cybersecurity didn’t beat the rap. Last year was full of twists and turns in the cybercrime world, with major outbreaks, new infection methods, and the evolution of the cryptocurrency crime industry. In aiming to make sense of the...

Drive-by mining and ads: The Wild Wild West

There seems to be a trend lately for publishers to monetize their traffic by having their visitors mine for cryptocurrencies while on their site. The idea is that you are accessing content for free and in exchange, your computer its CPU in particular will be used for mining purposes. The Pirate B...

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...

A week in security (June 26 – July 02)

Last week, we offered our readers tips on how to detect phishing attempts, gave an overview of Google's Be Internet Awesome campaign, supplemented an ongoing series on adware, and introduced the Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection to those who aren't already in the know. We also pushed out a number ...

Researchers left AI agents alone in a virtual town and watched it all unravel

Tech leaders have spent the past year telling everyone that AI agents are about to run financial systems, file your tax returns, and quietly buy your groceries. Just leave them alone, the rhetoric goes; they'll handle it. But a New York startup left ten of them alone in a virtual town for two...

ThreatDown achieves perfect score in latest AVLab assessment

ThreatDown has once again earned a perfect score in AVLabs January 2024 real-world malware detection tests, marking the eleventh consecutive quarter in achieving this feat. Let’s delve into the details of the test and how ThreatDown outperformed competitors in exhaustive testing. The AVLab...

A week in security (August 21 - August 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Teenage members of Lapsus$ ransomware gang convicted Update now! Google Chrome's first weekly update has arrived Smart lightbulb and app vulnerability puts your Wi-Fi password at risk Malwarebytes acquires Cyrus Security Ivanti Sentry critical vulnerability--don't...

Update now! WinRAR files can be abused to run malware

A new version of the file archiving software WinRAR fixes two vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to execute code on a target system. All the victim has to do is to open a specially crafted archive. After receiving a report about the vulnerability in June, a new version of the software w...

Solar monitoring systems exposed: Secure your devices

Researchers who go looking for devices exposed to the Internet report "tens of thousands" of solar photovoltaic PV monitoring and diagnostic systems can be found on the web. The systems are used for everything from system optimization to performance monitoring and troubleshooting. No fewer than...

Update now! Apple fixes three actively exploited vulnerabilities

Apple has released security updates for several products to address a set of flaws that it says are being actively exploited. Updates are available for these products: Safari 16.5.1 | macOS Big Sur and macOS Monterey ---|--- iOS 16.5.1 and iPadOS 16.5.1 | iPhone 8 and later, iPad Pro all models,...

Update Chrome now! Google patches actively exploited flaw

In a recent security advisory, Google says it patched a high-severity zero-day security flaw in its Chrome browser--the first in 2023--currently being exploited in the wild by threat actors. The company urges all its Windows, Mac, and Linux users to update to version 112.0.5615.121 immediately, a...

Update now! Apple patches vulnerabilities in MacOS and iOS

Apple has released information about the new security content of macOS Ventura 13.2.1 and of iOS 16.3.1 and iPadOS 16.3.1. Most prominent is a vulnerability in WebKit that may have been actively exploited. In December, 2022, we warned our readers about another actively exploited vulnerability in...

Consumer privacy and social media

Looking at the privacy related stories of 2022, its not hard to see that much of the focus was on the social media giants. Banning TikTok is slowly becoming a trend among US states. Google and Facebooks owner Meta was fined on several occasions for amounts that would have put other companies out ...

CircleCI: Malware stole GitHub OAuth keys, bypassing 2FA

Software development service company CircleCI has published its incident report on a breach that happened in December. CircleCI revealed an engineer's laptop was successfully infected with a yet-to-be-named information-stealing Trojan, which was used to steal an engineer's session cookie. The...

Malware targets 30 unpatched WordPress plugins

If you make use of plugins on your WordPress site and you probably do, its time to take a good look at whats running under the hood. Ars Technica reports that unpatched vulnerabilities being exploited across no fewer than 30 plugins. A long list of plugin problems If you own or operate a website...

Hundreds of Microsoft SQL servers found to be backdoored

Researchers at DCSO CyTec recently found a backdoor that specifically targets Microsoft SQL servers. The malware acts as an Extended Stored Procedure, which is a special type of extension used by Microsoft SQL servers. After scanning approximately 600,000 servers worldwide, they found 285 servers...

Xenomorph banking Trojan downloaded over 50,000 times from Play Store

Besides the name of the creature that “stars” in the Alien movies by 20th Century Fox, Xenomorph is also the name given to an Android banking Trojan. Researchers found this banking Trojan to be distributed on the official Google Play Store, with more than 50,000 installations. The researchers...

Update now! Apple fixes actively exploited zero-day

Apple has released a security fix for a zero-day vulnerability CVE-2022-22620 that it says "may have been actively exploited." According to the security update information provided by Apple the vulnerability exists in WebKit—the HTML rendering engine component of its Safari browser—and can be use...

The Facebook Pixel Hunt aims to unravel Facebook’s tracking methods. Will you join?

Browser developer Mozilla has announced a research project to provide insights into, and data about, a space that’s opaque to policymakers, researchers and users themselves. Tracking the trackers is the name of the game. Give up some of your data voluntarily to stop the involuntary collection by...

Google’s Threat Horizons report: Will the straightforward approach get results?

Google’s Cybersecurity Action Team has released a Threat Horizons report focusing on cloud security. It’s taken some criticism for being surprisingly straightforward and less complex than you may expect. On the other hand, many businesses simply don’t understand many of the threats at large...

Malspam banks on Kaseya ransomware attack

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team recently found a malicious spam campaign making the rounds and banking on the ransomware attack that forced Kaseya to shut down its VSA service. This is a classic example of an opportunistic attack conducted by potentially another threat actor/group off t...

Kaseya update delayed for security reasons

Software vendor Kaseya has been caught in the chaos of a supply-chain compromise by the REvil ransomware gang since Friday. Around 40 managed service providers MSPs that rely on Kaseya VSA software to administer customers IT—and up to 1,500 of their customers—have been stricken with the ransomwar...

A week in security (June 7 – June 13)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Amazon SIdewalk starts sharing your WiFi data tomorrow, thanks White hat, black hat, grey hat hackers: what’s the difference? Can two VPN “wrongs” make a right? Lock and Code S02E10 DOJ recovers pipeline ransom, signals more aggressive approach to cybercrime 800...