“Have I been pwnd?”– What is it and what to do when you *are* pwned

Adobe. Yahoo!. The US Department of Energy DoE. The New York Times. What these names have in common is that they have all experienced at least one breach in 2013—the year when threat actors started targeting organizations across industries to either steal data for profit or leak them to "teach...

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...

Interview with a bug bounty hunter: Youssef Sammouda

Behind the scenes there are many people working in cyber-security that make the internet a safer place. Youssef Sammouda is one of these people. He has submitted at least a hundred reports to Facebook which have been resolved, making Facebook a safer platform along the way. Generally speaking,...

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...

A week in security (December 28 – January 3)

First off we would like to wish all our readers a happy and secure 2021! Last week on Malwarebytes Labs we presented an overview of developments in the SearchDimension hijackers, we looked at the most enticing cyberattacks of 2020, and we also looked back at the strangest cybersecurity events of...

Emotet returns just in time for Christmas

Emotet is a threat we have been tracking very closely throughout the year thanks to its large email distribution campaigns. Once again, and for about two months, the botnet stopped its malspam activity only to return days before Christmas. In typical Emotet fashion, the threat actors continue to...

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...

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...

Lock and Code S1Ep4: coronavirus and responding to computer viruses with Akshay Bhargava

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 Akshay Bhargava, Chief Product Officer of Malwarebytes, about the similarities between coronavirus and computer viruses. We discuss computer virus...

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...

Mac threat detections on the rise in 2019

Conventional wisdom has been that, although not invulnerable to cyberthreats as some old Apple ads would have you believe, Macs are afflicted with considerably fewer infections than Windows PCs. However, when reviewing our 2019 Mac detection telemetry, we noticed a startling upward trend. Indeed,...

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...

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?...

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...

Phone spampocalypse: fighting back in the age of unwanted calls

When Nigel Guest, then president of the Council of Neighborhood Associations CNA, sent an email with the subject line, “test,” and the small letter “x” in its message body, the city of Berkeley, CA, went into a frenzy. You see, Mr. Guest thought he sent it only to himself, but he actually posted...

UK law enforcement: an uphill struggle to fight hackers

About 16 years ago in the UK, I walked into a local police station to report a computer crime, because walking into local police stations is how they did things back then. There may well also have been penny farthing bicycles, real pea souper fogs, Mary Poppins, and Jack the Ripper, though I coul...

A week in security (September 25 – October 01)

Recently, we talked about the hacking incident at Deloitte, one of the 'big four' global accounting firms. It was reported that client email addresses, usernames, and passwords were exposed. This also brought to light weaknesses in their policies and lack of threat intelligence to recover leaked...

Fake Claude Max giveaway hides a Google account phishing trap

Phishing follows whatever people want at the moment, and right now that includes AI subscriptions they don’t have to pay for. We recently uncovered a new variation on this theme: A fake Claude Max giveaway that uses a convincing Google sign-in window to steal login information. Claude’s paid plan...

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...

“Adult TikTok” searches lead to scams

Search for certain combinations of "TikTok" and adult content, and sooner or later you'll land on a page promising exactly what you searched for: an endless feed of explicit clips, no signup required, just tap and watch. There isn't one. On the other side of that click is an ad funnel dressed up ...

How to use GitHub safely

GitHub is rapidly becoming the go-to platform for sharing software. Originally built for developers to collaborate on code, it now hosts millions of projects ranging from hobby scripts to widely used applications. That popularity, however, has also made it an attractive delivery platform for...

Fake crypto gift card sites are getting harder to spot

You want to turn some crypto into a gift card. You search, click a promising result, and land on a site that looks polished and legitimate: a dark theme, trust badges, and promises of instant delivery and no ID checks. You wouldn't think to question it. But a professional-looking website isn't...

119 Edge extensions promised useful tools, instead downloaded malware

Microsoft has removed 119 extensions from the Edge add-on store which were all tied to one adware campaign. In a paper titled "Inside StegoAd: How We Disrupted a Massive Malicious Extension Campaign," Microsoft researchers detail how they uncovered and dismantled a sophisticated malware campaign...

A week in security (May 25 – May 31)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Payment apps are watching what you say Lock and Code S07E11 Scammers pretending to be Microsoft had help from US executives 700+ education and tech websites hijacked in huge ClickFix malware campaign Fake software on GitHub and SourceForge distribute Deno RAT Fake...

Encrypted messaging service intercepted, 2.3 million messages read by law enforcement

European law enforcement agencies have taken down yet another encrypted messaging service mainly used by criminals. The Matrix encrypted messaging service was an invite-only service which was also marketed under the names Mactrix, Totalsec, X-quantum, or Q-safe. Dutch and French authorities start...

Patch now: Mozilla patches two critical vulnerabilities in Firefox

Mozilla released version 124.0.1 of the Firefox browser to Release channel users the default channel that most non-developers run on March 22, 2024. The new version fixes two critical security vulnerabilities. One of the vulnerabilities affects Firefox on desktop only, and doesnt affect mobile...

Ransomware review: March 2024

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...

Stopping a targeted attack on a Managed Service Provider (MSP) with ThreatDown MDR

In late January 2024, the ThreatDown Managed Detection and Response MDR team found and stopped a three-month long malware campaign against a Managed Service Provider MSP based in Europe. In line with our observations of attackers increasingly relying on legitimate software in their attacks, the...

GoldPickaxe Trojan steals your face!

Well, the GoldPickaxe Trojan does not literally steal your face, but it does steal an image of your face in order to be able to identify as you. Researchers have found a family of Trojans, attributed to a financially motivated Chinese group, which come in versions for iOS and Android...

Clorox counts the cost of cyberattack

Cleaning products maker Clorox has reported losses of $49 million in connection to a cyberattack it suffered in August of last year. On Monday, August 14, 2023, Clorox disclosed it had identified unauthorized activity on some of its IT systems. Despite a business continuity plan, the incident...

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...

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...

What Gen Z really cares about when it comes to privacy

It would be easy to think that Gen Z doesn’t care about privacy. They worry less about ad tracking, do little to stem the flow of their private information online, and, as Malwarebytes recently uncovered, monitor one another’s lives far more than other generations. But it isn’t that Gen Z,...

FAQ: How does Malwarebytes ransomware rollback work?

As the old cybersecurity saying goes: "Its not if, but when." Everyone and their grandma have repeated this foreboding maxim about the nature of ransomware attacks, but sadly, that doesn't make it any less true. Time and again were reminded that ransomware can slip past even the best defenses...

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...

Malwarebytes' modernized bug bounty program—here's all you need to know

Malwarebytes welcomes and encourages independent researchers reporting vulnerabilities in our products, and has run a bug bounty program for several years. Our security team has spent the last few months modernizing the program and we thought you'd like to hear about it. What is a bug bounty...

BlackBasta is the latest ransomware to target ESXi virtual machines on Linux

BlackBasta, an alleged subdivision of the ransomware group Conti, just began supporting the encryption of VMwares ESXi virtual machines VM installed on enterprise Linux servers. Because more and more organizations have begun using VMs for cost-effectiveness and easier management of devices, this...

A week in security (January 31 – February 6)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Threat actor steals email with Zimbra zero-day FBI warns of bogus job postings on recruitment sites Investment scams are on the rise A worrying Etsy listing reveals the stalking potential of Apple’s AirTags Beware bogus OperaGX sponsorship offers $320 milllion stol...

Investment scams are on the rise

Preying on one of the most basic human flaws, investment scams and other get-rich-quick schemes are making up an ever larger portion of the online scammers cake. The number of victims, for now, is lower than the number of victims of fraudulent sales, identity fraud, and dating fraud, but the cost...

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...

Hackers take over 1.1 million accounts by trying reused passwords

The New York State Office of the Attorney General has warned 17 companies that roughly 1.1 million customers have had their user accounts compromised in credential stuffing attacks. Credential stuffing is the automated injection of stolen username and password pairs in to website login forms, in...

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...

Vulnerable WordPress plugin leaves online shoppers vulnerable

The most popular web content management system CMS is WordPress, which is used by more than 30% of all websites. By extension, the most popular ecommerce platform in the world is WooCommerce, a plugin that turns a WordPress website into an online shop. In fact, WooCommerce is so popular that it...

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...

Beware password-spraying fancy bears

The NSA, FBI, and CISA, in cooperation with the UKs National Cyber Security Centre NCSC, have issued a report that describes in detail why, and how, they think that a Russian military unit is behind large-scale brute-force attacks on the cloud-IT resources of government and private sector compani...

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...

City fined for tracking its citizens via their phones

The Dutch information watchdog—the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens AP—has fined the city of Enschede for € 600,000 for tracking its citizens movements without permission. It is the first time that a Dutch government body has been fined by the AP. The investigation was set in motion after it received ...

CodeCov supply-chain compromise likened to SolarWinds attack

CodeCov, a company that creates software auditing tools for developers, was recently breached the company says it was breached on April 1, and reported it on the April 15. According to investigators, this incident, in turn, gave attackers access to an unknown number of CodeCov’s clients networks...

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...

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...