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...

Your AI chats could be used in court

You might tell an AI chatbot secrets that you wouldn't divulge to your closest friends. If you do, though, beware: They could end up as evidence in court. An article in the Washington Post this week highlighted several cases in which people had discussed sensitive information with AI systems like...

Shared Claude chats were searchable on Google

Reddit users found that by using a specific Google search query, it was possible to find Claude conversations that users had shared. This exposed sensitive material, including crypto wallet keys, names, addresses, work notes, and even erotic or otherwise policy-violating chats. Fortune says...

Update your iPhone, iPad and Mac to fix Apple security holes

Apple has shipped a hefty round of July security patches, headlined by iOS/iPadOS 26.6, macOS Tahoe 26.6, and Safari 26.6, with dozens of vulnerabilities squashed across kernel, WebKit, media frameworks, and core apps. These updates are primarily about improving security rather than adding new...

What’s your data worth on the dark web? (Lock and Code S07E15)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Twenty years ago, a British mathematician named Clive Humby popularized a phrase that came to describe data's relationship with the entire global economy: "Data is the new oil." Pithy as the phrase sounds, it is undeniably true. Data steers decisions at...

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...

Company bragged phone mics could listen to conversations. They couldn’t.

A media company and two of its marketing partners have been fined for selling a service which, they said, listened in to people's conversations through their phones. Actually they did nothing of the sort. Most people have worried at some point that their phone has been listening to them through t...

Microsoft Defender vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild

Two Microsoft Defender vulnerabilities are being actively exploited in the wild. On May 20, 2026, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA added a notable set of actively exploited vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV catalog. The KEV catalog tracks...

Android fixes 47 vulnerabilities, including one zero-day. Update as soon as you can!

Google has patched 47 vulnerabilities in Android, including one actively exploited zero-day vulnerability in its May 2025 Android Security Bulletin. Zero-days are vulnerabilities that are exploited before vendors have a chance to patch them—often before they even know about them. The May updates...

A week in security (November 4 – November 10)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Hello again, FakeBat: popular loader returns after months-long hiatus TikTok ordered to close Canada offices following "national security review" Air fryers are the latest surveillance threat you didn’t consider Malwarebytes acquires AzireVPN to fuel additional VPN...

Facebook and Instagram passwords were stored in plaintext, Meta fined

Ireland’s privacy watchdog Data Protection Commission DPC has fined Meta €91M $101M after the discovery in 2019 that Meta had stored 600 million Facebook and Instagram passwords in plaintext. The DPC ruled that Meta was in violation of GDPR on several occasions related to this breach. It determin...

TEMU sued for being “dangerous malware” by Arkansas Attorney General

Chinese online shopping giant Temu is facing a lawsuit filed by State of Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, alleging that the retailers mobile app spies on users. “Temu purports to be an online shopping platform, but it is dangerous malware, surreptitiously granting itself access to virtually...

A week in security (June 3 – June 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Google will start deleting location history Advance Auto Parts customer data posted for sale Husband stalked ex-wife with seven AirTags, indictment says Microsoft Recall snapshots can be easily grabbed with TotalRecall tool Financial sextortion scams on the rise Sa...

Upcoming webinar: How a leading architecture firm approaches cybersecurity

How does a company navigate over 80 years of technical debt? Which tools do a security team of 5 rely on everyday? What threats are considered most dangerous? On March 28, 2024, Malwarebytes CEO, Marcin Kleczynski, and Payette Associates Director of Information Technology, Dan Gallivan, will answ...

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...

[updated] Vibrator virus steals your personal information

I know that some of you are expecting a post similar to that about a toothbrush botnet, but this is not a hypothetical case. It actually happened. A Malwarebytes Premium customer started a thread on Reddit saying we had blocked malware from trying to infect their computer after they connected a...

Raccoon Infostealer operator extradited to the United States

A Ukrainian national, Mark Sokolovsky, has been indicted for crimes related to fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft and extradited to the United States from the Netherlands, the US Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Texas has announced. In March 2022, around the same ti...

A week in security (December 18 – December 24)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Comcast’s Xfinity breached by Citrix Bleed; 36 million customer’s data accessed How does ThreatDown Vulnerability Assessment and Patch Management work? How Outlook notification sounds can lead to zero-click exploits Update Chrome now! Emergency update patches...

Update Chrome now! Emergency update patches zero-day

Google has released an emergency security update for Chrome that brings the browsers Stable channel to version 120.0.6099.129 for Mac, Linux and to 120.0.6099.129/130 for Windows. This update includes one security fix for a vulnerability that was subject to an existing exploit. The easiest way to...

Okta breach happened after employee logged into personal Google account

Okta has revealed details about a recent breach which exposed files belonging to customers. As we explained in our article about 1Password being a victim of this breach, it’s normal for Okta support to ask customers to upload a file known as an HTTP Archive HAR file. Having this file allows the...

Cloudflare Tunnel increasingly abused by cybercriminals

Cloudflare Tunnel provides you with a secure way to connect your resources to Cloudflare without a publicly routable IP address. Cybercriminals are increasingly using this service to keep their activities from being detected. Cloudflare Tunnel, also known by its executable name, Cloudflared,...

Warning issued over vulnerability in cardiac device monitoring software

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has issued a warning about a vulnerability that could result in remote code execution or a denial-of-service DoS condition impacting a healthcare delivery organizations Paceart Optima system. Paceart Optima is a software application that...

81% concerned about ChatGPT security and safety risks, Malwarebytes survey shows

Seven months after ChatGPT burst into our lives, it seems the lustre of the chatbot-that's-going-to-change-everything is starting to fade. A new survey by Malwarebytes exposes deep reservations about ChatGPT, with optimism in startlingly short supply. Of the respondents familiar with ChatGPT: 81%...

Introducing Malwarebytes Application Block: How to block unauthorized software from executing on Windows endpoints

Malwarebytes is excited to announce Application Block, a new module for Nebula and OneView for MSPs which helps organizations easily thwart unwanted applications from launching on Windows endpoints. For as many applications out there that help you keep business running as usual, there are just as...

CISA and the FBI issue alert about Cuba ransomware

In the latest StopRansomware effort of publicizing ransomware information for network defenders, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have issued a joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA on the ransomware known as "Cuba." Though named...

Don’t panic! “Unpatchable” Mac vulnerability discovered

Researchers at MITs Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab CSAIL found an attack surface in a hardware-level security mechanism utilized in Apple M1 chips. The flaw is unpatchable, but attackers would need to chain it with other vulnerabilities to make use of the attack method. The hardwa...

Ransomware Task Force priorities see progress in first year

This blog is part of our live coverage from RSA Conference 2022: US President Joseph R. Biden Jr., The White House, and law enforcement agencies across the world paid close attention last year when a group of more than 60 cybersecurity experts launched the Ransomware Task Force, heeding the group...

Okta admits 366 customers may have been impacted by LAPSUS$ breach

Through its usual means of communication, its Telegram channel, the LAPSUS$ group has posted screenshots of what appears to be superuser access to the Okta management console. As such, the group claims to have acquired "superuser/admin" access to Okta.com and gained access to Oktas customer data,...

Blunting RDP brute-force attacks with rate limiting

Thanks to the Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team for the information they provided for this article. Not long ago, guessing a Windows Remote Desktop Protocol RDP password successfully was widely regarded as ransomware operators number one choice for breaching a target. It attracted a lot of...

How to share your Wi-Fi password safely

You may not have as many people visiting your home due to the pandemic, but restrictions are a hit-and-miss affair. Its possible your region has opened up a little, and youre seeing folks in your home for the first time in a long time. They may well be bringing new devices to your home, and you m...

New variant of Konni malware used in campaign targetting Russia

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi In late July 2021, we identified an ongoing spear phishing campaign pushing Konni Rat to target Russia. Konni was first observed in the wild in 2014 and has been potentially linked to the North Korean APT group named APT37. We discovered two documents...

VPN protocols explained and compared

A Virtual Private Network VPN creates a safe "tunnel" between you and a computer you trust normally your VPN provider to protect your traffic from spying and manipulation. Any VPN worth its money encrypts the information that passes through it, so in this article we will ignore those that dont us...

Barcode Scanner app on Google Play infects 10 million users with one update

UPDATE: February 12, 2021 It has come to our attention that there is another bad actor in this story. Apparently, the original publisher, LAVABIRD LTD, is not the bad actor. It is instead an account under the name "The space team." Nevertheless, there is evidence that updates of Barcode Scanner b...

Zoom watermarking: pros and cons

Metadata, which gives background information on pieces of data, is typically hidden. It becomes a problem when accidentally revealed. Often tied to photography mishaps, it can be timestamps. It might be location. In some cases, it can be log analysis. Many tutorials exist to strip this informatio...

VideoBytes: Ryuk Ransomware Targeting US Hospitals

Hello Folks! In this Videobyte, we’re talking about why hospitals are being targeted by the Ryuk ransomware, what tricks they are using to pull this off and what their motivations might be. Ryuk ransomware is being spread to hospitals using targeted phishing emails that infect systems with the...

Avoid these PayPal phishing emails

For the last few weeks, there’s been a solid stream of fake PayPal emails in circulation, twisting FOMO fear of missing out into DO THIS OR BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. It’s one of the most common tools in the scammer’s arsenal, and a little pressure applied in the right way often brings results for...

Coronavirus campaigns lead to surge in malware threats, Labs report finds

In the first three months of 2020, as the world clamped down to limit coronavirus, cyber threats ramped up. Our latest, special edition for our quarterly CTNT report focuses on recent, increased malware threats which all have one, big thing in common—using coronavirus as a lure. Our report,...

A week in security (May 11 – May 17)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we explained why RevenueWire has to pay $6.7 million to settle FTC charges, how CVSS works: characterizing and scoring vulnerabilities, and we talked about how and why hackers hit a major law firm with Sodinokibi ransomware. We also launched another episode of our...

New AgentTesla variant steals WiFi credentials

AgentTesla is a .Net-based infostealer that has the capability to steal data from different applications on victim machines, such as browsers, FTP clients, and file downloaders. The actor behind this malware is constantly maintaining it by adding new modules. One of the new modules that has been...

A week in security (April 22 – 28)

Last week on Labs, we looked at security threats to headphones, privacy options in the world of law, and wandered through the FBI’s 2018 IC3 online crime report. We also explored another MageCart attack, and we released our 2019 Q1 Crime Tactics and Techniques report. Other cybersecurity news...

Are hackers gonna hack anymore? Not if we keep reusing passwords

Enterprises have a password problem, and it’s one that is making the work of hackers a lot easier. From credential stuffing to brute force and password spraying attacks, modern hackers don’t have to do much hacking in order to compromise internal corporate networks. Instead, they log in using wea...

New strain of Mac malware Proton found after two years

Last week, Kaspersky reported on a new variant of the Mac malware Proton, which they have dubbed Calisto, that has been around for at least two years. Calisto is thoroughly dead at this point, but there are still potential security implications involved with these older infections. Proton was fir...

Researchers discover vulnerabilities in smart assistants’ voice commands

Virtual personal assistants VPA, also known as smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, are in the spotlight for vulnerabilities to attack. Take, for example, that incident about an Oregon couple’s Echo smart speaker inadvertently recording their conversation and sending it to...

WPA3 will secure Wi-Fi connections in four significant ways in 2018

CES, the annual consumer electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas, isn’t just a showcase for virtual reality and poorly-timed power outages. It’s also an opportunity to get a peek at the future of network security. That’s why on the first day of CES, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced the newest security...

Digital forensics: How to recover deleted files

Where I personally have a problem remembering names and birthdays, computers have a hard time “forgetting” things. Even when we tell them to do so. If you ever unintentionally deleted a file, you may have been able to retrieve it from the Recycle Bin. Or, if it was past that stage and the file wa...

Revolut phishing texts appear days after data breach

Only days after Revolut acknowledged that it disclosed sensitive customer records to an unauthorized party, affected customers are receiving phishing texts. However, we don't know yet if the phishing texts are linked to the breach. The company had accepted fraudulent information requests sent fro...

Valve warns Steam hardware buyers: Expect fake delivery scams

Most of us are wise to phishing emails that don't contain much personal information. Generic "your account is suspended" messages usually get binned on sight. But what about the phishing emails that use your real name and address, and reference the specific product you bought last month? Even for...

A week in security (July 20 – July 26)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Don’t get fooled by TikTok resin art scams Call of Duty Mobile scam uses fake free points to steal player accounts OpenAI’s agent escaped its sandbox during a security test Google wants to store a selfie video of your face Beyond the Play Store: How Android threats...

The Odyssey piracy scams appear within hours of the movie’s release

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is one of the biggest movie releases of the year and scammers wasted no time taking advantage of it. Within hours of the film's release, we found scams targeting people looking for pirated copies. Some used fake browser warnings on piracy sites, while others...

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...