Collection 1 data breach: what you need to know

Yesterday, news broke that the largest data dump in history had been discovered, with more than 770 million people's Personally Identifiable Information PII decrypted, catalogued, and up for grabs on the Internet. The files, which are being dubbed Collection 1, were originally found on cloud...

The 6 best Chrome extensions for privacy and security

While searching for security- and privacy-improving extensions, users may end up installing an extension that is counterproductive to their goals. To help our readers I have compiled a list of Chrome extensions that can actually help you improve your online privacy and security. Our regular reade...

What is encryption? And why it matters in a VPN

Encryption is a term used to describe the methods that hide the true meaning of messages using code, especially to prevent unauthorized access to the information in the messages. Not all users of virtual private networks VPN care about encryption, but many are interested and benefit from strong...

How bitcoin payments unmasked a man who hired a Dark Web contract killer

An Italian citizens apparent attempt to hire a hitman on the Dark Web has been undone by clever analysis of his Bitcoin transactions. The man, who is reported to be an IT worker employed by a major corporation, is alleged to have paid the hitman to assassinate his former girlfriend. What happened...

Reputation management in the age of cyberattacks against businesses

Avid readers of the Malwarebytes Labs blog would know that we strive to prepare businesses of all sizes for the inevitability of cyberattacks. From effectively training employees about basic cybersecurity hygiene to guiding organizations in formulating an incident response IR program, a...

Windows Installer vulnerability becomes actively exploited zero-day

Sometimes the ways in which malicious code gets in the hands of cybercriminals is frustrating for those in the industry, and incomprehensible to those on the outside. A quick summary of the events in the history of this exploit: A researcher found a flaw in Windows Installer that would allow an...

Pegasus spyware has been here for years. We must stop ignoring it

On July 18, a group of 17 newspaper and media organizations—aided by Amnesty International’s Security Lab and the research group Citizen Lab—revealed that one of the world’s most advanced and viciously invasive spyware tools had been used to hack, or attempt to hack, into 37 mobile phones owned b...

What is Incognito mode? Our private browsing 101

Incognito mode is the name of Google Chrome’s private browsing mode, but it’s also become the catch-all term used to describe this type of web surfing, regardless of the browser being used. Some call it Private Mode, others call it Private Browsing. Apple almost certainly got there first, yet...

Luas data ransom: the hacker who cried wolf?

In a terrible start to the year for Irish tram firm Luas, their site was compromised a week ago and adorned with a stark ransom warning: Click to enlarge You are hacked. Some time ago I wrote that you have serious security holes. You didn’t reply. The next time someone talks to you, press the rep...

How to harden AdwCleaner’s web backend using PHP

More and more applications are moving from desktop to the web, where they are particularly exposed to security risks. They are often tied to a database backend, and thus need to be properly secured, even though most of the time they are designed to restrict access to authenticated users only. PHP...

Edge’s Super Duper Secure Mode benchmarked: How much speed would you trade for security?

In an attempt to make Edge more secure, the Microsoft Vulnerability Research team has started to experiment with disabling Just-In-Time JIT compilation in the browsers V8 JavaScript engine, to create what its calling Super Duper Secure Mode. The reasoning behind this experiment sounds valid. A...

Steamship Authority answers question: Who’s the next ransomware victim?

After the attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS, many may have been wondering, as we did, what the next ransomware headline was going to be. Well, here it is—another victim in the vital infrastructure of transport and logistics, although this time the impact may be less brutal. Steamship Authority...

Trolls abuse Twitter Lists to collate their targets

I’ve been using Twitter for more than a decade. And one of its features that I find valuable is Lists. Turns out I'm not the only one. Lists allow Twitter users to group profiles or feeds based on certain criteria, such as sports, tech news, celebrities, fashion—you get the idea. Having Lists mak...

Update now! F5 BIG-IP vulnerability being actively exploited

The Australian Cyber Security Centre ACSC has announced it is aware of the existence of Proof of Concept PoC code exploiting a F5 Security Advisory Addressing Multiple Vulnerabilities in its BIG-IP Product Range. The vulnerability listed as CVE-2022-1388 allows attackers to bypass authentication ...

Magecart skimmers found on Amazon CloudFront CDN

Update 06-08-2019: The compromises of Amazon S3 buckets continue and some large sites are being affected. Our crawler spotted a malicious injection that loads a skimmer for the Washington Wizards page on the official NBA.com website. The skimmer was inserted in this JavaScript library:...

QxSearch hijacker fakes failed installs

Recently, one of the more dominant search hijacker families on our radar has started to display some curious behavior. The family in question is delivered by various Chrome extensions and classified as PUP.Optional.QxSearch because of its description in listings of installed extensions, which tel...

Kimsuky APT continues to target South Korean government using AppleSeed backdoor

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi. The Kimsuky APT—also known as Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima—is a North Korean threat actor that has been active since 2012. The group conducts cyber espionage operations to target government entities mainly in South Korea. On December...

Newly observed PHP-based skimmer shows ongoing Magecart Group 12 activity

This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura Web skimming continues to be a real and impactful threat to online merchants and shoppers. The threat actors in this space greatly range in sophistication from amateurs all the way to nation state groups like Lazarus. In terms of security, many...

[updated] Patch now! Microsoft plugs actively exploited zero-days and other updates

On what might seem a relatively calm Patch Tuesday with 55 vulnerabilities being patched, the fact that six of them were rated “Critical” and two of them actively exploited spoils the Zen factor somewhat. Publicly disclosed computer security flaws are listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and...

11-13 year old girls most likely to be targeted by online predators

The Internet Watch Foundation IWF, a not-for-profit organization in England whose mission is "to eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online", has recently released its analysis of online predator victimology and the nature of sexual abuse media that is currently prevalent online. The scope of th...

Extortion, precision malware, and ruthless scams. Read the State of Malware 2021 report

Last year, threat actors took advantage of the COVID-19 public health crisis in a way previously considered unimaginable, not only preying on uncertainty and fear during the initial months of the global pandemic, but retooling attack methods, reneging on promises, strengthening malware, and...

Researcher’s audacious hack demonstrates new type of supply-chain attack

Often the most brilliant ideas are the most simple. The hard part is being the first one to come up with the idea and put it to use. One such brilliant yet simple idea belongs to Alex Birsan, a researcher who came up with a method to breach 35 big tech companies including Microsoft, Apple, Yelp,...

Senate Committee passes new antitrust bill aimed at Big Tech companies

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act AICOA, a bill that forbids Big Tech platforms like Apple, Alphabet Google’s parent company, and Amazon from generally behaving in an anti-competitive manner, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee late last week with a 16-6 vote. US Senator Am...

Coronavirus phishing: “Welcome back to the office…”

As offices start to slowly open back up, the theoretically post-pandemic world is changing its threat landscape once again, and that includes the likely inclusion of coronavirus phishing attempts. With the move to remote work, attackers switched up their tactics. Personal devices and home network...

“I have full control of your device”: Sextortion scam rears its ugly head in time for 2021

Malwarebytes recently received a report about a fresh spate of Bitcoin sextortion scam campaigns doing the rounds. Bitcoin sextortion scams tend to email you to say theyve videoed you on your webcam performing sexual acts in private, and ask you to pay them amount in Bitcoin to keep the video whi...

A week in security (May 13 – 19)

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs reviewed active and unique exploit kits targeting consumers and businesses alike, reported about a flaw in WhatsApp used to target a human rights lawyer, and wrote about an important Microsoft patch that aimed to prevent a "WannaCry level" attack. We also profiled the...

2022's most routinely exploited vulnerabilities—history repeats

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, National Security Agency NSA, Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, and international partners have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA called the 2022 Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities. We went over the list and it felt like...

Microsoft Office zero-day “Follina”—it’s not a bug, it’s a feature! (It’s a bug)

Update: Please see our FAQ for the latest guidance and mitigation tips on Follina. On Monday May 30, 2022, Microsoft issued CVE-2022-30190 regarding the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool MSDT in Windows vulnerability. The mitigation offered by Microsoft consists of an alternative method to...

Pega Infinity patches authentication vulnerability

Security researchers came across a Pega Infinity vulnerability through participation in Apple’s bug bounty program, after focusing on vendors that supplied technology to Apple. By using Burp Suite—an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications—the security researchers...

The Advanced Persistent Threat Files: APT1

We've heard a lot about Advanced Persistent Threats APTs over the past few years. As a refresher, APTs are prolonged, aimed attacks on specific targets with the intention to compromise their systems and gain information from or about that target. While the targets may be anyone or anything—a...

US, EU, UK, NATO blame china for “reckless” Exchange attacks

Do you remember back when the latest urgent update was a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange? How is that only four months ago? The trigger for the urgent advice in March was the fact that Microsoft detected multiple zero-day exploits being used to attack on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchang...

A zero-day guide for 2020: Recent attacks and advanced preventive techniques

Zero-day vulnerabilities enable threat actors to take advantage of security blindspots. Typically, a zero-day attack involves the identification of zero-day vulnerabilities, creating relevant exploits, identifying vulnerable systems, and planning the attack. The next steps are infiltration and...

Cleaning up after Emotet: the law enforcement file

This blog post was authored by Hasherezade and Jérôme Segura Emotet has been the most wanted malware for several years. The large botnet is responsible for sending millions of spam emails laced with malicious attachments. The once banking Trojan turned into loader was responsible for costly...

Update now! Nvidia released fixes for 10 flaws in Windows GPU drivers

Multiple NVIDIA graphic card models have been found to have flaws in their GPU drivers, with six medium-and four high-severity ratings. Last Monday, the company released a software security update for NVIDIA GPU Display Driver to address the vulnerabilities. If exploited, they could lead to denia...

macOS 11’s hidden security improvements

A deep dive into macOS 11s internals reveals some security surprises that deserve to be more widely known. Contents 1. Introduction 1. Disclaimers 2. macOS 11s better known security improvements 1. Secret messages revealed? 3. CPU security mitigation APIs 1. The NOSMT mitigation 2. The TECS...

Resident Evil 8 just the latest game plagued by fake demos and early access scams

There’s been a number of scams targeting fans of major upcoming video game releases over the last week or two. Why is this happening, and what can you do to ensure both you and your children avoid such fakeouts? Preview power: the 80s and 90s Back in the 80s, games reviews were only really found ...

FBI and CISA warn of APT groups exploiting ADSelfService Plus

In a joint advisory the FBI, the United States Coast Guard Cyber Command CGCYBER, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA warn that advanced persistent threat APT cyber-actors may be exploiting a vulnerability in ManageEngines single sign-on SSO solution. The vulnerability...

Microsoft fixes seven zero-days, including two PuzzleMaker targets, Google fixes serious Android flaw

This patch Tuesday harvest was another big one. The Windows updates alone included seven zero-day vulnerability updates, two of them are actively being used in the wild by a group called PuzzleMaker, four others that have also been seen in the wild, plus one other zero-day vulnerability not known...

Funke Media Group suffers nationwide ransomware attack in Germany

On December 22, Germany’s third largest publisher fell victim to a cyberattack that affected systems in offices all around the country. The Funke Media Group publishes dozens of newspapers, like Berliner Morgenpost, Hamburger Abendblatt, and Bergedorfer Zeitung, as well as magazines, several loca...

What is personal information? In legal terms, it depends

In early March, cybersecurity professionals around the world filled the San Francisco Moscone Convention Center’s sprawling exhibition halls to discuss and learn about everything infosec, from public key encryption to incident response, and from machine learning to domestic abuse. It was RSA...

Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) vulnerabilities

Simple Authentication and Security Layer SASL is an authentication layer used in Internet protocols. SASL is not a protocol, but rather a framework that provides developers of applications and shared libraries with mechanisms for authentication, data integrity–checking, and encryption. Within the...

Twitter says it out loud: Removing anonymity will not stop online abuse

An investigation by Twitter into racist tweets levied against three Black players on the English football team following the national hopefuls’ loss against Italy last month revealed that anonymity played almost no role in whether users posted abusive comments from their accounts. The analysis,...

Scammers use old browser trick to create fake virus download

Tech support scammers are reusing an old technique in their existing browser locker browlock schemes to force a special kind of file download. Contrary to past attacks, where the purpose was to flood the machine with a large amount of file requests in order to crash the browser, this one is purel...

Chinese APT's favorite vulnerabilities revealed

In a joint cybersecurity advisory, the National Security Agency NSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have revealed the top CVEs used by state-sponsored threat actors from China. The advisory aims to "inform federal and state,...

Was threat actor KAX17 de-anonymizing the Tor network?

A mysterious threat actor has run thousands of malicious servers in entry, middle, and exit positions of the Tor network. Tracked as KAX17, the threat actor ran at its peak more than 900 malicious servers part of the Tor network, which typically tends to hover around a daily total of up to...

Healthcare service faces test of willpower with Ransomware authors

Healthcare and ransomware are in the news in a big way. Data leaks are inevitable, but those are typically associated with accidents by the general public. Possibly the most malicious type of data spillage is when people compromising said data decide to do the spilling. It’s one thing to...

Ryuk ransomware develops worm-like capability

The French governments computer emergency readiness team, thats part of the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, or ANSSI, has discovered a Ryuk variant that has worm-like capabilities during an incident response. For those unacquainted with Ryuk, it is a type of ransomware that is used in...

Talking Emotet’s takedown with Adam Kujawa: Lock and Code S02E02

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 Adam Kujawa, security evangelist and director of Malwarebytes Labs, about Emotet, the former public enemy No. 1 in the cybercrime world. What began in 20...

Intel CPU vulnerabilities fixed. But should you update?

Microsoft has released out of band updates for information disclosure vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs. The normal gut reaction would be to install out of band updates as soon as possible. Microsoft wouldnt be releasing the updates ahead of the regular cycle without good reason, would it? Well, mayb...

How security orchestration improves detection and response

Working together in perfect harmony like the wind and percussion sections of a symphony orchestra requires both rigorous practice and a skilled conductor. Wouldn’t it be great if our cybersecurity solutions did the same to better protect organizations? The methods and tools used to accomplish thi...