iPhone calendar spam attacks on the rise

Recently, we have seen an increasing number of reports from iPhone users about their calendars filling up with junk events. These events are most often either pornographic in nature, or claim that the device has been infected or hacked, and in all cases they contain malicious links. This phenomen...

International Women’s Day: Women in tech name their heroes

Happy Monday! And if you haven’t yet checked the significance of this day—March 8—before grabbing coffee, today is International Women’s Day IWD. Since March 19, 1911, the year the very first IWD was observed in several European countries, millions of people have been calling for women to be give...

Lock and Code S1Ep18: Finding consumer value in Cybersecurity Awareness Month with Jamie Court

This week on Lock and Code, we discuss the top security headlines generated right here on Labs and around the Internet. In addition, we talk to Jamie Court, president of the non-profit advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, about the consumer value in Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Launched initially ...

Chrome extensions that lie about their permissions

“But I checked the permissions before I installed this pop-up-blocker—it said nothing about changing my searches,” my dad retorts after I scold him for installing yet another search-hijacking Chrome extension. Granted, they are not hard to remove, but having to do it over and over is a nuisance...

EncroChat system eavesdropped on by law enforcement

Due to the level of sophistication of the attack, and the malware code, we can no longer guarantee the security of your device. This text caused a lot of aggravation, worries, and sleepless nights. No one wants to hear the security of their device has been compromised by a malware attack. The goo...

Data privacy law updates eyed by Singapore

In early 2019, Singapore’s data privacy regulators proposed that the country’s data privacy law could use two new updates—a data breach notification requirement and a right of data portability for the country’s residents. The proposed additions are commonplace in several data privacy laws around...

Cybersecurity labeling scheme introduced to help users choose safe IoT devices

The Internet of Things IoT is a term used to describe a wide variety of devices that are connected to the Internet to improve user experience. For example, a doorbell becomes part of the IoT when it connects to the Internet and allows users to see visitors outside their door. But the way in which...

A week in security (March 30 – April 5)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we offered readers tips for safe online shopping now that cybercriminals are ramping up Internet-based attacks, showed the impact that GDPR has around the world, and helped users understand how social media platforms mine their personal data. We also hosted our...

Child identity theft, part 2: How to reclaim your child’s identity

In a world where children as young as a single day old can fall prey to fraud, it is more important than ever to educate parents and other caretakers about the dangers of child identity theft. While the hope is that perceptions can be changed and criminals brought to justice, likely the biggest...

Tampa Bay Times hit with Ryuk ransomware attack

Florida newspaper The Tampa Bay Times suffered a Ryuk ransomware attack Thursday, making it the latest major victim of the notorious ransomware family that continues to rise in popularity. Curiously, the paper is at least the third Florida-based Ryuk victim in the past year. The attack, which The...

6 ways hackers are targeting retail businesses

Retail hacking is no new phenomenon, although it has increased in frequency over the last few years. In fact, retailers experienced more breaches than any other industry in 2019, and they've lost over $30 billion to cybersecurity attacks. Both brick-and-mortar and online businesses experience...

A week in security (December 30 – January 5)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a dive into edge computing, looked at new web skimmer techniques, and rolled our eyes at silly people doing silly things. Other cybersecurity news: Stills and chills: A Reddit user notices their security camera is grabbing stills from other people’s devices...

A week in security (December 16 – 22)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we signalled that Mac threat detections have been on the rise in 2019, discussed how a new Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act COPRA would empower American users, warned that the Spelevo exploit kit debuts a new social engineering trick, and let our own Statler and...

Help prevent disaster donation scams from causing more misery

It’s a sad day when we have to warn people about medical charity scams, or tax fakeouts, or even have a week dedicated to foiling charity fraud—but here we are. With so many natural disasters occurring, from wildfires in California to tornadoes in Dallas, disaster donation scams remain a top...

Data and device security for domestic abuse survivors

For more than a month, Malwarebytes has worked with advocacy groups, law enforcement, and cybersecurity researchers to deliver helpful information in fighting stalkerware—the disturbing cyber threat that enables domestic abusers to spy on their partners’ digital and physical lives. While we’ve...

6 ways to keep up with cybersecurity without going crazy

As we dive headfirst into National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it seems only fitting to discuss ways to stay on top of developments in modern cybersecurity and privacy. What's the best way to stay protected? How can you determine if something is a scam? Which big company has been breached now?...

World Cup 2018: malware attacks gunning for goal

World Cup 2018 is upon us and in full swing, bringing together 32 nations for a month of footballing to see who'll be crowned World Champion. With the tournament underway, we thought it'd be fun to see which of the footballing powerhouses also expended a similar amount of energy fighting off...

National cybersecurity awareness month: simple steps for online safety

With each new devastating breach of security—Equifax, Deloitte, and Sonic, to name a few recent cyber fails—the need for increased cybersecurity awareness has never been more apparent. It’s a good thing, then, that this month is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month NCSAM. Observed every October...

Compromised LinkedIn accounts used to send phishing links via private message and InMail

Phishing continues to be a criminals' favorite for harvesting user credentials with more or less sophisticated social engineering tricks. In this post, we take a look at a recent attack that uses existing LinkedIn user accounts to send phishing links to their contacts via private message but also...

Microsoft’s April 2024 Patch Tuesday includes two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities

The April 2024 Patch Tuesday update includes patches for 149 Microsoft vulnerabilities and republishes 6 non-Microsoft CVEs. Three of those 149 vulnerabilities are listed as critical, and one is listed as actively exploited by Microsoft. Another vulnerability is claimed to be a zero-day by...

[updated] Apex Legends Global Series plagued by hackers

The North American finals of online shooter game Apex Legends has been postponed after games were disrupted by hacking incidents. Apex Legends, published by EA, is currently in an important stage of its Global Series, the regional finals mode. This is a big deal for the top players since there is...

Info-stealers can steal cookies for permanent access to your Google account

Hackers have found a way to gain unauthorized access to Google accounts, bypassing any multi-factor authentication MFA the user may have set up. To do this they steal authentication cookies and then extend their lifespan. It doesn’t even help if the owner of the account changes their password...

Introducing ThreatDown: A new chapter for Malwarebytes

Since I started Malwarebytes 15 years ago the threat landscape has changed. Our offerings have evolved. And now the next chapter of our journey begins today. How did we get here? My first cyber “combatant” was an early form of adware running amok on my family’s computer. Removing it was a team...

FakeSG enters the 'FakeUpdates' arena to deliver NetSupport RAT

Over 5 years ago, we began tracking a new campaign that we called FakeUpdates also known as SocGholish that used compromised websites to trick users into running a fake browser update. Instead, victims would end up infecting their computers with the NetSupport RAT, allowing threat actors to gain...

MOVEit Transfer fixes three new vulnerabilities

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has warned about three new vulnerabilities in Progress Software's MOVEit software. A cybercriminal could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to obtain sensitive information. In the advisory, CISA encouraged users to review Progress MOVEi...

Update Android now! Google patches three actively exploited zero-days

In Julys update for the Android operating system OS, Google has patched 43 vulnerabilities, three of which are actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities. The security bulletin notes that there are indications that these three vulnerabilities may be under limited, targeted exploitation. If your...

Riot Games compromised, new releases and patches halted

Popular game developer Riot Games brings word of a system compromise which may cause issues for updates to well known titles, although for the time being it seems as though customer data isn't affected. A social engineering development Making the notification via Twitter late last week, were stil...

HP OMEN users, update your driver now!

HP has released a patch to fix a flaw in the HP OMEN driver. As far as we know the flaw isnt being actively exploited, but its worth applying the patch as soon as you can. The flaw, the fix The driver vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2021-3437, was found by Kasif Dekel, a senior security...

WhatsApp hit with €225 million fine for GDPR violations

WhatsApp was hit with a €225 million fine for violating the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR, the European Union’s sweeping data protection law that has been in effect for more than three years. The fine represents the highest ever penalty levied by the Irish Data Protection Commission,...

Cold wallet, hot wallet, or empty wallet? What is the safest way to store cryptocurrency?

In August of 2021, a thief stole about $600 million in cryptocurrencies from The Poly Network. They ended up giving it back, but not because they were forced to. Slightly more than one week later, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid was hacked and lost $97 million worth of digital coins. Thes...

How to spot a DocuSign phish and what to do about it

Phishing scammers love well known brand names, because people trust them, and their email designs are easy to rip off. And the brands phishers like most are the ones youre expecting to hear from, or wouldnt be surprised to hear from, like Amazon or DHL. Now you can add DocuSign to that list...

5 years for swatter who caused a man’s death for a Twitter handle

Doxing or doxxing is in the news again, for an absolutely shocking story that ended with a mans death caused by a swatting attack. If you dont know what doxxing or swatting are, don’t worry. We’ll explain it all. The doxing 101 Doxing someone is a technique going back to the 90s. Back then,...

Is crypto’s criminal rollercoaster approaching a terminal dip?

It’s a turbulent time in the cryptomining realm, especially for malware authors. Some big attacks and a lot of publicity has resulted in prolific groups promising to disband, even if potentially only temporarily. Running a tighter ship The mining banhammer continues to swing as China keeps puttin...

SMS authentication code includes ad: a very bad idea

SMS authentication codes are back in the news, and the word Id use to summarise their reappearance is "embattled." I can still remember a time where two-factor authentication 2FA, authentication grids, regional lockouts, Yubikeys, and offline authentication apps simply did not exist. And if they...

Security pros agree about threats—convincing everyone else is the problem

How about that Colonial Pipeline? As troubling as this event may be, for those of us working in the world of cybersecurity it can be hard to convince others to take dangers like this seriously—regardless of how real and immediate they are. “Sadly, the upper leadership team does not understand the...

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...

Deepfakes were going to change everything. And then they didn’t

For much of 2020, the most visible conversation about the US election and tech was related to deepfakes images or videos where the subject is replaced by another likeness. They could “destroy democracy” generally, and influence the US election in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine. People talked...

iPhone app exposed other people’s call recordings

Video and audio are huge privacy concerns for people. If something goes wrong with tech it can have major ramifications. You’re likely very familiar with warnings about video. However, audio hasn’t always been so prominent. It’s only really since the rise of home assistants like Amazons Alexa tha...

New steganography attack targets Azerbaijan

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi Threat actors often vary their techniques to thwart security defenses and increase the efficiency of their attacks. One of the tricks they use is known as steganography and consists of hiding content within images. We recently observed a malicious Word...

Release the Kraken: Fileless injection into Windows Error Reporting service

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi and Jérôme Segura. On September 17th, we discovered a new attack called Kraken that injected its payload into the Windows Error Reporting WER service as a defense evasion mechanism. That reporting service, WerFault.exe, is usually invoked when an error...

Phishers spoof reliable cybersecurity training company to garner clicks

"It happens to the best of us." And, indeed, no adage is better suited to a phishing campaign that recently made headlines. Fraudsters used the brand, KnowBe4—a trusted cybersecurity company that offers security awareness training for organizations—to gain recipients’ trust, their Microsoft Outlo...

Lock and Code S1Ep6: Recognizing facial recognition’s flaws with Chris Boyd

This week on Lock and Code, we discuss the top security headlines generated right here on Labs and around the Internet. In addition, we talk to Chris Boyd, lead malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, about facial recognition technology—its early history, its proven failures at accuracy, an...

Mass surveillance alone will not save us from coronavirus

As the pattern-shattering truth of our new lives drains heavy—as coronavirus rends routines, raids our wellbeing, and whiplashes us between anxiety and fear—we should not look to mass digital surveillance to bring us back to normal. Already, governments have cast vast digital nets. South Koreans...

Criminals hack Tupperware website with credit card skimmer

Update 2: A spokesperson for Tupperware has given a public statement to Alex Scroxton, Security Editor at ComputerWeekly. You can read it here. Update: Following our blog post, we continued to monitor the Tupperware website. As of 03/25 at 1:45 PM PT, we noticed that the malicious PNG file had be...

Coronavirus scams, found and explained

Coronavirus has changed the face of the world, restricting countless individuals from dining at restaurants, working from cafes, and visiting their loved ones. But for cybercriminals, this global pandemic is expanding their horizons. In the past week, Malwarebytes discovered multiple email scams...

A week in security (March 2 – 8)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we fired up part 1 of our series on child identity theft, asked how well law enforcement can deal with cybercriminals, and took a trip down the memory lane of moral panic. We also looked at the positives and negatives of VPNs and examined our own progress in the...

Bring your own privacy: VPNs for consumers and orgs

VPNs virtual private networks have been popular for quite some time now, and they’re worth a huge amount of money for the companies working in this area. They’re also at the forefront of combating potential repression and censorship around the world. It might all sound a bit esoteric and unrelate...

Android Trojan xHelper uses persistent re-infection tactics: here’s how to remove

We first stumbled upon the nasty Android Trojan xHelper, a stealthy malware dropper, in May 2019. By mid-summer 2019, xHelper was topping our detection charts—so we wrote an article about it. After the blog, we thought the case was closed on xHelper. Then a tech savvy user reached out to us in...

A week in security (November 18 – 24)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we looked at stalkerware’s legal enforcement problem, announced our cooperation with other security vendors and advocacy groups to launch Coalition Against Stalkerware, published our fall 2019 review of exploit kits, looked at how Deepfake on LinkedIn makes for...

How to protect your data from Magecart and other e-commerce attacks

In today's golden age of online shopping, consumers take to the Internet, punch in a few credit card details, and happily receive products at their doorstep, safe in the knowledge that their online vendor is well-known, vetted, and therefore their website has to be secure, right? Dut did you know...