No summer break for Magecart as web skimming intensifies

This summer, you are more likely to find the cybercriminal groups Magecart client-side rather than poolside. Web skimming, which consists of stealing payment information directly from within the browser, is one of today's top web threats. Magecart, the group behind many of these attacks, gained...

Bad romance: catphishing explained

You've heard or read about some variant of this story before: Girl meets Boy on a dating website. Girl falls in love. Boy claims he does, too. Girl is excited to meet Boy soon. But at the last minute, Girl finds out that Boy 1 had an accident and broke a hip; 2 has a very sick relative he needs t...

Explained: blockchain technology

Last week, we talked about what cryptocurrency is and why cybercriminals love it. We mentioned that cryptocurrency was founded on a technology called blockchain, which is a tight system that, when applied correctly, is more secure than most other financial transactions. In this post, we'll explai...

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...

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...

A week in security (August 24 – August 30)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Protect your WhatsApp account with new passkey and 2FA upgrades The AI agent swarm that attacked Hugging Face is a warning for the future Flock wants privacy to meet surveillance halfway Fake listings can turn trusted platforms into scam springboards Fake Apple Pay...

Scammers target OnlyFans users with deepfakes

OnlyFans creators are used to posting adult videos of themselves online, but what happens if someone takes control of their images and uses them for fraud? This week, USA Today revealed how criminals are impersonating OnlyFans creators using AI tools. They use deepfake content to lure the real...

Anthropic’s Mythos AI used social engineering to target real people

Anthropic’s Mythos AI agent, tested by the UK AI Safety Institute AISI, has reportedly attempted a real‑world social‑engineering style hack against GitHub maintainers by creating fake human profiles, pressuring them to accept malicious code, and then editing logs to hide its tracks when challenge...

Fake malware-signing service Fox Tempest dismantled by Microsoft

Microsoft says it dismantled a malware-signing-as-a-service MSaaS called Fox Tempest, which helped cybercriminals make malware appear legitimate. The service let customers submit malicious files to be digitally signed with short-lived Microsoft-issued certificates, making the malware look...

“Simply staggering” surveillance conducted by social media and streaming services, FTC finds

The US Federal Trade Commission FTC released a report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services, finding that—and this will not come as a surprise to our regular readers—the companies engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order t...

Was T-Mobile compromised by a zero-day in Jira?

A moderator of the notorious data breach trading platform BreachForums is offering data for sale they claim comes from a data breach at T-Mobile. The moderator, going by the name of IntelBroker, describes the data as containing source code, SQL files, images, Terraform data, t-mobile.com...

A week in security (June 10 – June 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Truist bank confirms data breach Update now! Google Pixel vulnerability is under active exploitation Adobe clarifies Terms of Service change, says it doesn’t train AI on customer content 23andMe data breach under joint investigation in two countries When things go...

Say hello to the fifth generation of Malwarebytes

Announcing the latest version of Malwarebytes, which brings a faster, responsive, and consistent user interface, integrated security and privacy, and expert guidance to keep you secure. Heres what you can expect: 1. Unified user experience across platforms The new generation of Malwarebytes now...

Billions of scraped Discord messages up for sale

Four billions public Discord messages are for sale on an internet scraping service called Spy.pet. At first sight there doesn’t seem to be much that is illegal about it. The messages were publicly accessible and there are no laws against scraping data. However, it turns out the site did disregard...

A week in security (April 8 – April 14)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: How to change your Social Security Number Apple warns people of mercenary attacks via threat notification system How to check if your data was exposed in the AT&T breach Microsoft’s April 2024 Patch Tuesday includes two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities H...

[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...

Patch now! Fortra GoAnywhere MFT vulnerability exploit available

On January 22, 2024, software company Fortra warned customers about a new authentication bypass vulnerability impacting GoAnywhere MFT Managed File Transfer that allows an attacker to create a new admin user. Fortra GoAnywhere MFT is a file transfer solution that organizations use to exchange the...

Meet the entirely legal, iPhone-crashing device, the Flipper Zero: Lock and Code S04E25

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… It talks, it squawks, it even blocks! The stocking-stuffer on every hobby hacker’s wish list this year is the Flipper Zero. “Talk” across low-frequency radio to surreptitiously change TV channels, emulate garage door openers, or even pop open your friend’s...

Chrome starts the countdown to the end of tracking cookies

Google has announced that it will start rolling its Chrome web browsers new Tracking Protection feature from January of 2024. Tracking Protection is part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative to phase out third-party cookies. The Tracking Protection feature aims to disable third-party cookies...

[Updated] Apple issues Rapid Security Response for zero-day vulnerability

Apple has issued an update for a vulnerability which it says may have been actively exploited. In the security content for Safari 16.5.2 we can learn that the vulnerability was found in the WebKit component which is Apples web rendering engine. In other words, WebKit is the browser engine that...

"Brad Pitt," a still body, ketchup, and a knife, or the best trick ever played on a romance scammer, with Becky Holmes: Lock and Code S04E06

Becky Holmes knows how to throw a romance scammer off script--simply bring up cannibalism. In January, Holmes shared on Twitter that an account with the name "Thomas Smith" had started up a random chat with her that sounded an awful lot like the beginning stages of a romance scam. But rather than...

Warning issued over Royal ransomware

As part of its StopRansomware effort, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has published a Cybersecurity Advisory CSA about Royal ransomware. Royal ransomware is a Ransomware-as-a-service Raas that first made an appearance in January 2022. In September of that year, it began...

Jailbreaking ChatGPT and other large language models while we can

The introduction of ChatGPT launched an arms race between tech giants. The rush to be the first to incorporate a similar large language model LLM into their own offerings read: search engines may have left a lot of opportunities to bypass the active restrictions such as bias, privacy concerns, an...

Analyzing and remediating a malware infested T95 TV box from Amazon

A couple of weeks ago, security news outlets made their rounds reporting on an Android TV box available on Amazon that came pre-installed with malware. The findings came from a Canadian developer, Daniel Milisic, who posted on his GitHub. What Daniel found was an Android T95 TV box infected with...

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...

Uber data stolen via third-party vendor

Uber is facing a new cybersecurity incident after threat actors stole some of its data from Teqtivity, a third-party vendor that provides asset management and tracking services. "We are aware of customer data that was compromised due to unauthorized access to our systems by a malicious third...

Exchange servers abused for spam through malicious OAuth applications

Microsoft has published a security blog about an investigation into an attack in which threat actors used malicious OAuth applications to abuse Exchange servers for their spam campaign. The threat actor behind this attack has been active for many years, and has been running spam campaigns using...

North Korea’s Lazarus APT leverages Windows Update client, GitHub in latest campaign

This blog was authored by Ankur Saini and Hossein Jazi Lazarus Group is one of the most sophisticated North Korean APTs that has been active since 2009. The group is responsible for many high profile attacks in the past and has gained worldwide attention. The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team...

Android Trojan GriftHorse, the gift horse you definitely should look in the mouth

Researchers at Zimperium have discovered an aggressive mobile premium services campaign with over 10 million victims all over the world. The stolen amount could amass hundreds of millions of Euros. The scam was hidden behind malicious Android apps, and the researchers have named the Trojan...

Beware of COVID Pass scams

You’ve likely seen fake parcel delivery texts in the news recently, and we’ve covered a few of these ourselves. SMS missives claim a package is waiting to be delivered, and a small processing fee is required. There is no package; it’s a ruse to have people hand over their credit card details. It’...

Check your passwords! Synology NAS devices under attack from StealthWorker

Synology PSIRT Product Security Incident Response Team has put out a warning that it has recently seen and received reports about an increase in brute-force attacks against Synology devices. PSIRT suspects the botnet commonly known as StealthWorker is responsible for this increase in activity...

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...

Windows 10 to retire in four years (or 52 Patch Tuesdays, in sysadmin years)

Microsoft will terminate support for Windows 10 Home and Pro on 14 October 2025, a decade after the original Windows 10 was brought to market. Although some may claim that a Microsoft document has been "quietly edited" over the weekend to reflect this "sudden change", this reveal isnt new. In fac...

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...

FBI shuts down malware on hundreds of Exchange servers, opens Pandora’s box

A rather remarkable story has emerged, setting the scene for lively debates about permissible system access. A press release from the US Department of Justice Judge has revealed that the FBI were granted permission to perform some tech support backdoor removal. Bizarrely, they did this without...

The human impact of a Royal Mail phishing scam

Last week, we looked at a Royal Mail themed scam which has very quickly become the weapon of choice for phishers. It’s pretty much everywhere at this point. Even one of my relatives with a semi-mystical ability to never experience a scam ever, received a fake SMS at the weekend. The problem with...

How to enable Facebook’s hardware key authentication for iOS and Android

Since 2017 desktop users have had the opportunity to use physical security keys to log in to their Facebook accounts. Now iOS and Android users have the same option too. Physical security keys are a more secure option for two-factor authentication 2FA than SMS which is vulnerable to SIM swap...

NCSC: Be Cyber Aware, especially during the Christmas season

In early December, the National Cyber Security Centre, a UK-based cybersecurity body and a part of GCHQ, kicked off the next chapter of its Cyber Aware campaign initiative, focusing on online shopping threats during the Christmas season. Cyber Aware is the UK government’s "national campaign on...

Mobile network operator falls into the hands of Fullz House criminal group

Update 2020-10-05: The malicious code has been removed from Boom! Mobiles website Most victims of Magecart-based attacks tend to be typical online shops selling various goods. However, every now and again we come across different types of businesses which were affected simply because they happene...

Deepfakes or not: new GAN image stirs up questions about digital fakery

Subversive deepfakes that enter the party unannounced, do their thing, then slink off into the night without anybody noticing are where it’s at. Easily debunked clips of Donald Trump yelling THE NUKES ARE UP or something similarly ludicrous are not a major concern. We’ve already dug into why that...

Cloud data protection: how to secure what you store in the cloud

The cloud has become the standard for data storage. Just a few years ago, individuals and businesses pondered whether or not they should move to the cloud. This is now a question of the past. Today, the question isn't whether to adopt cloud storage but rather how. Despite its rapid pace of...

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...

Security tips for working from home (WFH)

Over the last decade, remote work and working from home has grown in popularity for many professionals. In fact, a 2018 study found more than 70 percent of global employees work remotely at least once per week. However, the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdown in many parts of the world ha...

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...

How to protect yourself from doxing

“Abandon hope all ye who enter.” This ominous inscription affixed atop the gates to Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy applies peculiarly well to describe the state of the Internet today. It’s hard to draw a parallel to the utility that the Internet has offered to modern civilization—perhaps no other...

Mozilla urges Apple to make privacy a team sport

We often say cybersecurity is a team sport, but, pending a public advocacy campaign from one major tech developer to another, the same might be true for online privacy. Mozilla is currently getting people around the world to lend their voices toward Apple, asking that the company place some extra...

Sophisticated threats plague ailing healthcare industry

The healthcare industry is no longer circling the drain, but it's still in critical condition. While many organizations in healthcare have aimed at or made positive strides toward a more robust cybersecurity and privacy posture, they still have a long way to go. In 2018, healthcare had the highes...

A week in security (January 1 – January 7)

New year, new threats, as 2018 gets underway. On our blog, we had dubious searches aplenty for those hunting for Malwarebytes information, and we also covered the huge Meltdown/Spectre bug, affecting hardware going back to 10 years. Other news Coin miners are at it again, with a proof of concept...

Phony WhatsApp used Unicode to slip under Google’s radar

After a troubling week for Google not so long ago, the company is under the spotlight once more for missing another app that, after further investigations by several members of Reddit, was found laden with adware. This app, which was called "Update WhatsApp Messenger," used the logo and developer...

Google’s new search redirects make links harder to check before you click

Google is changing how some links in its search results work. Instead of linking directly to the destination, Google has started routing some search result links through opaque google.com/goto?url=... redirects. The url parameter does not show a readable version of the destination but uses a...