TrickBot indictment reveals the scale and complexity of organized cybercrime

Back in 2016, we saw the emergence of a botnet mainstay called TrickBot. Initially observed by our Labs team spreading via malvertising campaigns, it quickly became a major problem for businesses everywhere. Whether spread by malvertising or email spam, the end result was the same. Data...

Ransomware disrupts food supply chain, Exchange exploitation suspected

When malware found its way into the network of Bakker Logistiek, a company specializing in the transport and warehousing of food and other products, on the night of 4 to 5 April, its IT systems ground to a halt. And, along with them, the reception of orders from clients, and the delivery of goods...

VideoBytes: Is it goodbye forever to Maze ransomware?

Hello Folks! In this Videobyte we’re talking about Maze ransomware and whether or not its shutting down, and what that means for the cybercrime world. The notorious Maze ransomware group, known for its corporate targeting and data leaking extortion schemes is, apparently, shutting down operations...

Chris Krebs, director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, fired by President

On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, just days after CISA called the recent presidential election the “most secure in American history.” In a tweet posted the same day, the President justified his...

Lock and Code S1Ep17: Journalism’s role in cybersecurity with Alfred Ng and Seth Rosenblatt

Most everything about cybersecurity—the threats, the vulnerabilities, the breaches and the blunders—doesnt happen in a vacuum. And the public doesn’t learn about those things because threat actors advertise their exploits, or because companies trumpet their lackluster data security practices. No,...

Chaos in a cup: When ransomware creeps into your smart coffee maker

When the fledgling concept of the Internet of Things IoT was beginning to excite the world almost a decade ago, perhaps no coffee lover at that time wouldve imagined including the coffee machine in the roster of internet-connected devices—even in jest. True, the simple, utilitarian coffee machine...

Consumerization: a better way to answer cybersecurity challenges

A version of this article originally appeared in Forbes on February 12, 2020. Consumerization: The specific impact that consumer-originated technologies can have on enterprises. Gartner More and more, enterprises are coming to understand that they need to adopt the agile processes and product...

Why managed service providers (MSP) are critical for business continuity

With the threat landscape becoming more hostile to businesses, small- and medium-sized businesses SMBs are often finding it difficult to cope. Hence, they turn to managed service providers MSPs for help, not only to keep their businesses going—the concept known as business continuity—but also to...

Harnessing the power of identity management (IDaaS) in the cloud

Sometimes, consumers have it easy. Take, for example, when they accidentally lock themselves out of their personal email. Their solution? Reset the password. With one click, they're able to change their old, complicated password with a new, more memorable one. Self-service password reset is aweso...

A week in security (February 10 – 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we explained how to battle online coronavirus scams with facts, discussed the persistent re-infection techniques of Android/Trojan.xHelper and how to remove it, provided cyber tips for safe online dating, and showed how Hollywood teaches us misleading cybersecurity...

Dubious downloads: How to check if a website and its files are malicious

A significant amount of malware infections and potentially unwanted program PUP irritants are the result of downloads from unreliable sources. There are a multitude of websites that specialize in distributing malicious payloads by offering them up as something legitimate or by bundling the desire...

Hundreds of counterfeit online shoe stores injected with credit card skimmer

There's a well-worn saying in security: "If it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't." This can easily be applied to the myriad of online stores that sell counterfeit goods—and now attract secondary fraud in the form of a credit card skimmer. Allured by great deals on brand names, many...

When corporate communications look like a phish

Many organizations will spend significant sums of money on phishing training for employees. Taking the form of regular awareness training, or even simulated phishes to test employee awareness, this is a common practice at larger companies. However, even after training, a consistent baseline of...

Why bad coding habits die hard—and 7 ways to kill them

Developers are usually the focus of blame when software vulnerabilities cause organizational breaches. Sometimes, quality assurance engineers are included in the flame. Interestingly, though, hardly anyone looks at why bad coding habits form in the first place. We're talking about the culture, th...

Hancitor: fileless attack with a DLL copy trick

This article was authored by David Sánchez, Mickaël Roger, and Jérôme Segura During the past few years, malicious spam campaigns have proven to be one of the most efficient infection vectors, in part due to a combination of social engineering and a regular number of Office vulnerabilities. The...

Yet more mobile adware found in Google Play

Finding an adware variant that made its way past the Google Play store is out of the ordinary. So when two adware variants slip by in one week, we take notice. Last week, we added two new Ad SDKs to our growing list of adware detections—Adware.Solid and Adware.Cootek. Both Ad SDKs were found in a...

Locky ransomware adds anti sandbox feature (updated)

By Marcelo Rivero and Jérôme Segura The Locky ransomware has been very active since its return which we documented in a previous blog post. There are several different Locky campaigns going on at the same time, the largest being the one from affiliate ID 3 which comes with malicious ZIP containin...

Online backlash ends in Google rolling back Google Earth AI tool after a day

Google has walked back an AI feature that allowed users to generate artificial images inside Google Earth, after a predictable flurry of deepfakes. Google switched on the AI image generation feature inside Google Earth's web version on July 30. It was available to everyone. The system used Google...

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...

‘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...

Millions of people spied on by malicious browser extensions in Chrome and Edge

Researchers have discovered a campaign that tracked users’ online behavior using 18 browser extensions available in the official Chrome and Edge webstores. The total number of installs is estimated to be over two million. These extensions offered functionality, received good reviews, touted...

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...

Google patches actively exploited zero-day in Chrome. Update now!

Google has released an update for its Chrome browser which includes a patch for a vulnerability that Google says is already being exploited, known as a zero-day vulnerability. Google has fixed that zero-day with the release of versions 128.0.6613.84/.85 for Windows/macOS and 128.0.6613.84 for Lin...

First million breached Ticketmaster records released for free

The cybercriminal acting under the name "Sp1d3r" gave away the first 1 million records that are part of the data set that they claimed to have stolen from Ticketmaster/Live Nation. The files were released without a price, for free. When Malwarebytes Labs first learned about this data breach, it...

(Almost) everything you always wanted to know about cybersecurity, but were too afraid to ask, with Tjitske de Vries: Lock and Code S05E13

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Ready to know what Malwarebytes knows? Ask us your questions and get some answers. What is a passphrase and what makes it—what’s the word? Strong? Every day, countless readers, listeners, posters, and users ask us questions about some of the most commonly...

Data leak site BreachForums is back, boasting Live Nation/Ticketmaster user data. But is it a trap?

Notorious data leak site BreachForums appears to be back online after it was seized by law enforcement a few weeks ago. At least one of BreachForums domains and its dark web site are live again. However, questions have been raised over whether it is a genuine attempt to revive the forums once aga...

Apple warns people of mercenary attacks via threat notification system

Apple has reportedly sent alerts to individuals in 92 nations on Wednesday, April 10, to say its detected that they may have been a victim of a mercenary attack. The company says it has sent out these types of threat notifications to over 150 countries since the start in 2021. Mercenary spyware i...

Apple warns of “privacy and security threats” after EU requires it to allow sideloading

Despite several warnings about the risks, Apple will allow European iPhone owners to install apps obtained from outside the official App store sideloading. These drastic changes are brought about to comply with the European Union’s EU Digital Markets Act DMA. The Digital Markets Act DMA establish...

A week in security (January 22 – January 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: 10 things to do to improve your online privacy Ring curtails law enforcement’s access to footage Malicious ads for restricted messaging applications target Chinese users Malwarebytes wins every MRG Effitas award for 2 years in a row AI likely to boost ransomware,...

Investment fraud a serious money maker for criminals

Europols’s spotlight report ‘Online fraud schemes: a web of deceit’, looks into online fraud schemes—a major crime threat in the EU and beyond—and one of the reports primary themes is investment fraud. But first I want to share some more remarkable conclusions from the report: Charity scams that...

The top 4 ransomware gang failures of 2023

Ransomware gangs care about one thing: Stealing money. Over time, their craven, cybercriminal efforts have toppled businesses, destabilized hospitals, and ruined lives. Worst of all, they show no sign of slowing down, and their extortion attempts—which no longer focus on ransomware delivery...

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...

Update now! Chrome fixes actively exploited zero-day vulnerability

Google has released an update to Chrome which includes seven security fixes including one for a vulnerability which is known to have already been exploited. If you’re a Chrome user on Windows, Mac, or Linux, you should update as soon as possible. The easiest way to update Chrome is to set it to...

Signal is testing usernames so you don’t have to share your phone number

Messaging service Signal is testing support for usernames as a replacement for phone numbers to serve as user identities. Signal provides encrypted instant messaging and is popular among people that value their privacy. Compared to more popular services like WhatsApp, Signal offers more layers of...

Ransomware review: September 2023

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...

Teenage members of Lapsus$ ransomware gang convicted

A wave of video game developer compromises has come to a court-based conclusion for those responsible, with several convictions the end result. Arion Kurtaj, and a second teen who cannot be named due to their age, are finding themselves to be in quite a lot of trouble after repeated and sustained...

Rheinmetall attacked by BlackBasta ransomware

On Friday May 19, 2023, the German arms producer Rheinmetall acknowledged a cyber-incident at one of its subsidiaries in the private sector. The BlackBasta ransomware group has already claimed responsibility for the attack through its leak-site. Entry for Rheinmetall on BlackBasta leak site...

Is it OK to train an AI on your images, without permission?

Website owners are once again at war with tools designed to scrape content from their sites. An AI scraper called img2dataset is scouring the Internet for pictures that can be used to train image-generating AI tools. These generators are increasingly popular text-to-image services, where you ente...

Ransomware led to multiple DISH Network outages

Satellite broadcast organisation DISH experienced a major system issue over the past week which affected multiple services. Websites and channels were unavailable, logins were non-functional, and some folks couldnt even pay their bills as a result of the downtime. There was a suspicion that...

TrickBot gang members sanctioned after pandemic ransomware attacks

In a collaborative partnership, officials in the United States and the United Kingdom unmasked and imposed financial sanctions against seven members of the notorious Russian gang TrickBot alias "TrickLoader", a mainstream banking Trojan turned malware-as-a-service MaaS platform for other criminal...

A week in security (January 9—15)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Slack private code on GitHub stolen Crypto-inspired Magecart skimmer surfaces via digital crime haven Security vulnerabilities in major car brands revealed Microsoft ends extended support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 today Pokemon NFT card game malware...

A week in security (August 22 - August 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Cryptojackers growing in numbers and sophistication CISA wants you to patch these actively exploited vulnerabilities before September 8 Reddit users crowdsourcing explicit images and identities Criminals socially engineer their way to bank details with fake arrest...

China’s Tonto Team increases espionage activities against Russia

According to analyses of several cybersecurity firms and CERT Computer Emergency Response Team Ukraine CERT-UA, the state-sponsored threat actor group Tonto Team, which has been linked to China-backed cyber operations, is ramping up its spying campaign against Russian government agencies. The...

You can be tracked online using your Chrome browser extensions

A researcher has found a way to generate a fingerprint of your device from your installed Google Chrome extensions, and then use that fingerprint to track you online. Fingerprinting is a way of figuring out what makes your device unique and then using that to identify you as you move around the...

Prometheus ransomware’s flaws inspired researchers to try to build a near-universal decryption tool

This blog is part of our live coverage from RSA Conference 2022: Prometheus—a ransomware build based on Thanos that locked up victims’ computers in the summer of 2021—included a major “vulnerability” that led security researchers at IBM to try and build a one-size-fits-all ransomware decryptor th...

Threat actor steals email with Zimbra zero-day

Researchers have discovered a threat actor attempting to exploit a cross-site scripting XSS zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra email platform. Zimbra is open source webmail application used for messaging and collaboration. Cross-site scripting is a type of injection attack wherein a vulnerabili...

What is a search engine and why does anyone care which one you use?

An attempt at a simple definition: a search engine is a software system that allows users to find content on the Internet based on their input. The introduction of the major search engines brought about huge changes in the way we use the Internet. There is a wealth of knowledge available for thos...

ICO challenges adtech to step up privacy protection

The UK Information Commissioners Office ICO wants the advertising industry to come up with new initiatives that address the risks of adtech, and take account of data protection requirements from the outset. The ICO is an independent body set up to uphold information rights. The technology that is...

New law will issue bans, fines for using default passwords on smart devices

The idea of connecting your entire home to the internet was once a mind-blowing concept. Thanks to smart devices, that concept is now a reality. However, this technological advancement aimed at making our lives more convenient—not to mention very cool and futuristic!—has also opened a wide door f...

How to defend your website against card skimmers

Black Friday and the holiday season are approaching, and shoppers are forecast to spend record amounts again this year. Retail websites big and small can expect a lot of interest from shoppers looking for deals, and a lot of interest from cybercriminals looking to cash in on those shoppers, by...