How a VPN can protect your online privacy

Have you ever experienced the feeling of relief that comes when you do something silly, but youre glad you did it where people dont know you? Or maybe you wished you were somewhere like that, but alas… That is what a Virtual Private Network VPN can do for you: it can put you in a place where you...

New Emotet delivery method spotted during downward detection trend

Emotet, one of cybersecurity’s most-feared malware threats, got a superficial facelift this week, hiding itself within a fake Microsoft Office request that asks users to update Microsoft Word so that they can take advantage of new features. This revamped presentation could point to internal effor...

‘Just tell me how to fix my computer:’ a crash course on malware detection

Malware. You’ve heard the term before, and you know it’s bad for your computer—like a computer virus. Which begs the question: Do the terms “malware” and “computer virus” mean the same thing? How do you know if your computer is infected with malware? Is "malware detection" just a fancy phrase for...

Lock and Code S1Ep10: Pulling apart the Internet of Things with JP Taggart

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 JP Taggart, senior security researcher at Malwarebytes, about the Internet of Things. For years, Internet capabilities have crept into modern consumer...

How CVSS works: characterizing and scoring vulnerabilities

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS provides software developers, testers, and security and IT professionals with a standardized process for assessing vulnerabilities. You can use the CVSS to assess the threat level of each vulnerability, and then prioritize mitigation accordingly. This...

Coronavirus Bitcoin scam promises “millions” working from home

In the last week, we’ve seen multiple coronavirus scams pushed by bad actors, including RAT attacks via fake health advisories, bogus e-books working in tandem with Trojans, and lots of other phishing shenanigans. Now we have another one to add to the ever-growing list: dubious coronavirus Bitcoi...

Securing the MSP: best practices for vetting cybersecurity vendors

Ironically, to keep costs low for their enterprise and mid-market clients, managed service providers MSPs are some of the most reliant on third-party vendors—including those providing security. While this is generally not an indication of dysfunction or vulnerability, the responsible MSP will be...

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...

Growing rate of robocalls threatens user privacy

When a person sees a call from an unknown number and picks up to hear a recorded voice on the other end, they've received a robocall. Some are helpful, such as reminders of upcoming doctor's appointments or school announcements. However, the vast majority are from unsolicited parties trying to...

Facebook’s plain text misstep, and other password sins

Two days after an article by Brian Krebs disclosed that hundreds of millions of Facebook account passwords had been stored in plain text for years, Facebook released a statement indicating they hash and salt passwords, more or less in accordance with industry best practice. Plain text storage of...

Safari users: Where did your extensions go?

Safari 12 has brought with it some changes to how OSX handles browser extensions. At WWDC in June, Apple announced that Safari would block legacy extensions installed from outside the Extensions Gallery, which itself would now be deprecated. As a replacement, Safari will now rely on "app...

Old MS Office feature weaponized in malspam attacks

There have been a lot of talks recently following a write up and proof of concept about a Microsoft Office feature that can be misused and weaponized by malicious actors. The protocol, known as Dynamic Data Exchange.aspx DDE, has actually been around for a long time, and allows applications to...

Meta ordered to pay $942 million over harm to children

A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay a total of $942 million after finding that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users and that the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms. Reportedly, the decision combines a $375 million civil-penalty verdict from March with a newly...

Fake Claude search results lure Mac users into ClickFix attack

Researchers found that cybercriminals are using sponsored search results and shared Claude chats to lure victims into a typical ClickFix attack to install malware on macOS devices. ClickFix is a social engineering method that tricks users into infecting their own device with malware. Users are...

‘Car crash victim’ calls mother for help and $15K bail money. But it’s an AI voice scam

A woman in Florida was tricked into giving thousands of dollars to a scammer after her daughter's voice was AI-cloned and used in a scam. Sharon Brightwell says she received a call from someone who sounded just like her daughter. The woman on the other end was sobbing and crying, telling her mom...

All Gmail users at risk from clever replay attack

Cybercriminals are abusing Google’s infrastructure, creating emails that appear to come from Google in order to persuade people into handing over their Google account credentials. This attack, first flagged by Nick Johnson, the lead developer of the Ethereum Name Service ENS, a blockchain...

Apple users: Update your devices now to patch zero-day vulnerability

Apple has released a host of security updates across many devices, including for a zero-day bug which is being actively exploited in iOS. Apple said: "A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against...

Explained: Domain fronting

Domain fronting is a technique of using different domain names on the same HTTPS connection. Put simply, domain fronting hides your traffic when connecting to a specific website. It routes traffic through a larger platform, masking the true destination in the process. The technique became popular...

Tracking down a trojan: An inside look at threat hunting in a corporate network

At Malwarebytes, we talk a lot about the importance of threat hunting for SMBs--and not for no good reason, either. Just consider the fact that, when a threat actor breaches a network, they dont attack right away. The median amount of time between system compromise and detection is 21 days. By th...

Swatting-as-a-Service is a growing and complicated problem to solve

One Telegram channel has been found to be behind a great deal of swatting incidents in the US. Using the anonymity provided by Telegram, caller ID spoofing, and voices generated by Artificial Intelligence AI, a person or group of persons calling themselves Torswats is suspected to be behind dozen...

Zero-day spells disaster for Bitcoin ATM

Bitcoin ATMs have experienced a severe bout of cash drain after a zero-day bug was exploited to steal a total of $1.5 million in digital currency. The ATMs, located in various convenience stores, function along the lines of regular banking ATMs except your dealings are all in the cryptocurrency...

Malware targeting SonicWall devices could survive firmware updates

Researchers at Mandiant have identified a malware campaign targeting SonicWall SMA 100 Series appliances, thought to be of Chinese origin. The malware was likely deployed in 2021, and was able to persist on the appliances tenaciously, even surviving firmware upgrades. The malware was able to stea...

Malwarebytes wins 2023 CRN 'Coolest Endpoint And Managed Security Companies' award

CRN, a trusted source for IT channel news and analysis, has named Malwarebytes one of the "Coolest Endpoint And Managed Security Companies" on the 2023 CRN Security 100 list. The CRN Security 100 highlights channel-friendly cybersecurity vendors across a number of market segments including Endpoi...

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...

Key takeaways from Malwarebytes 2023 State of Mobile Cybersecurity

The results of our latest survey on mobile cybersecurity in K-12 and hospitals are in--and its not all peaches and roses. When we talk about endpoint protection, its only natural to only think about the most commonly compromised endpoints like work laptops and servers--but your smartphone isnt of...

Introducing Malwarebytes Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

With our Managed Detection and Response MDR service now generally available for businesses and MSPs, you may be wondering: What is MDR, how does Malwarebytes MDR work, and do I need it? Underpinned by our award-winning EDR technology, Malwarebytes MDR offers powerful and affordable threat...

New variant of Android SpyJoker malware removed from Play Store after 3 million+ installs

Security researcher Maxime Ingrao has found a new variant of Android/Trojan.Spy.Joker which hes dubbed Autolycos. Malware in this family secretly subscribes users to premium services. The researcher noted that the eight applications that contained this malware had racked up a total of over 3...

Brave browser goes the extra mile to block third party cookies

Brave is testing a new feature to stop bounce tracking, a sneaky method that websites use to load third-party tracking cookies so they can gather more information about who is visiting their site. The Brave browser As you may remember from our post about the best browsers for privacy and security...

New iPhone malware spies via camera when device appears off

When removing malware from an iOS device, it is said that users need to restart the device to clear the malware from memory. That is no longer the case. Security researchers from ZecOps have created a new proof-of-concept PoC iPhone Trojan capable of doing "fun" things. Not only can it fake a...

OSX.XLoader hides little except its main purpose: What we learned in the installation process

Last week, Check Point Research described a new Mac variant of malware they call XLoader. It was identified as being the successor of something called Formbook, a very prevalent threat in the Windows world. According to Check Point, the Mac version of the malware is being "rented" as part of a...

Racing against a real-life ransomware attack, with Ski Kacoroski: Lock and Code S02E12

At 11:37 pm on the night of September 20, 2019, cybercriminals launched a ransomware attack against Northshore School District in Washington state. Early the next morning, Northshore systems administrator Ski Kacoroski arrived on scene. As Kacoroski soon found out, he and his team were on a race...

Binance receives the ban hammer from UK’s FCA

Binance, the worlds largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchange network, has had a rough few days. First, Japans financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency FSA, issued its second warning to Binance on Friday, 25 June, for operating in the country without permission The first warning...

How to clear cookies

Until the information age, cookies were only known as a tasty but unhealthy snack that some people enjoyed, and others avoided. HTTP cookies, also known as computer, browser, or Internet cookies, are similarly divisive. Although some people like the more personalized browsing experience created b...

What is an IP address? Do I need one?

An IP address tells computers how to find a certain device within a computer network. An IP address is like an address label for information packets. For each network your computer is connected to, it has a unique IP address on that network. So, one device can have several IP addresses at the sam...

Careers in cybersecurity: Malwarebytes talks to teachers and students

Every year, I take part in talks for universities and schools. The theme is often breaking into infosec. I give advice to teens considering pursuing tech as a further area of study. I explain a typical working day for degree undergraduates. Sometimes I’m asked to give examples of conference talks...

Egregor ransomware hit by arrests

In a collaboration between French and Ukranian law enforcement, arrests have been made that might put a dent in one of the worlds most sophisticated ransomware operations. As reported first by France Inter, law enforcement made the arrests after French authorities traced ransom payments to...

Android emulator abused to introduce malware onto PCs

Emulators have played a part in many tech-savvy users’ lives. They introduce a level of flexibility that not only allows another system to run on top of a user’s operating system—a Windows OS running on a MacBook laptop, for example—but also allows video gamers to play games designed to work on a...

German users targeted with Gootkit banker or REvil ransomware

This blog post was authored by Hasherezade and Jérôme Segura On November 23, we received an alert from a partner about a resurgence of Gootkit infections in Germany. Gootkit is a very capable banking Trojan that has been around since 2014 and possesses a number of functionalities such as keystrok...

California’s Prop 24 splits data privacy supporters

California’s data privacy house is divided. On the Golden State’s November ballot this year is the question as to whether to amend California’s barely-two-year-old data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act. Far from the first attempt to change the fledgling law, Proposition 24 sets...

Malwarebytes Labs releases 2020 State of Malware Report

Today is Safer Internet Day—and what better way to celebrate/pay homage than to immerse yourself in research on the latest in malware, exploits, PUPs, web threats, and data privacy? It so happens we've got just the right content to kick-start the party because today we released the results of our...

Battling online coronavirus scams with facts

Panic and confusion about the recent coronavirus outbreak spurred threat actors to launch several malware campaigns across the world, relying on a tried-and-true method to infect people’s machines: fear. Cybercriminals targeted users in Japan with an Emotet campaign that included malicious Word...

Deepfakes laws and proposals flood US

In a rare example of legislative haste, roughly one dozen state and federal bills were introduced in the past 12 months to regulate deepfakes, the relatively modern technology that some fear could upend democracy. Though the federal proposals have yet to move forward, the state bills have found...

Deepfakes and LinkedIn: malign interference campaigns

Deepfakes haven't quite lost the power to surprise, but given their wholesale media saturation in the last year or so, there’s a sneaking suspicion in some quarters that they may have missed the bus. When people throw a fake Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn online these days, the response seems to ...

A week in security (November 11 – 17)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we offered statistics and information on a sneaky new Trojan malware for Android, inspected a bevy of current Facebook scams, and explained the importance of securing food and agriculture infrastructure. We also released our latest report on cybercrime tactics 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...

Engaging students in cybersecurity: a primer for educators

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Maimonides The education sector has had its share of breaches. And schools, like medical and retail institutions, continue to struggle when it comes to securing their highly-priced assets: student a...

How to build an incident response program: GDPR guidelines

In today’s computing world, it is not a matter of “if” an organization will get compromised, but “when.” That’s why, in addition to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR going into effect this May, many organizations need to have a robust incident response program to ensure...

Alleged creator of Fruitfly indicted for 13 years of spying

Way back at the start of last year, we took a look at something called Fruitfly, a Mac backdoor using old code that had been around for a long time and could deep breath upload files to computers, record images and video, snoop around in victims' information, take screenshots, and also log...

Mobile Menace Monday: despicable adware

Are you wondering how that mysterious icon ended up on your Android phone's start screen? Annoyed at the ads clogging your notification bar? You aren't alone. Thousands of Android apps now include software that shoves marketing icons onto your phone's start screen or pushes advertising into your...

A week in security (September 11 – September 17)

Last week, we dug into phishing campaigns done via Linkedin accounts, remediation versus prevention, issues with smart syringe pumps, and advised you to go patch against a Word 0day. We had some tips regarding identity theft protection, explored crowdsourced fraud, and explained YARA rules...