[updated] You can update now: Microsoft patches 97 bugs including 6 zero-days and a wormable one

How time flies sometimes. Microsoft yesterday released the first patch Tuesday security updates of the year 2022. The update includes fixes for six zero-day vulnerabilities and a total of 97 bugs. This includes two Remote Code Execution RCE vulnerabilities affecting open source libraries. None of...

Update now! Apple patches bugs in iOS and iPadOS

On two consecutive days Apple has released a few important patches. iOS 14.8.1 comes just a month after releasing iOS 14.8 for those who didn’t want to update their iPhones to iOS 15. This update also came as a sort of surprise as it was not beta-tested beforehand. Earlier this year Apple announc...

Fake Elder Scrolls Online developers go phishing on PlayStation

A player of popular gaming title Elder Scrolls Online recently took to Reddit to warn users of a phish via Playstation messaging. This particular phishing attempt is notable for ramping up the pressure on recipients—a classic social engineering technique taken to the extreme. A terms of service...

How to securely send your personal information

This story originally ran on The Parallax and was updated on July 3, 2019. A few months ago, my parents asked a great security question: How could they securely send their passport numbers to a travel agent? They knew email wasn’t safe on its own. Standard email indeed isn’t safe for sending...

Steer clear of Bitcoin Cash generators

Here’s an interesting evolution on a well-worn scam, taking one profit generating fakeout and turning it into something else entirely. For years, gamers have been stuck navigating the treacherous waters of fake video game giveaways. With so many actual genuine gaming giveaways around, you’re neve...

Adware and PUPs families add push notifications as an attack vector

Some existing families of potentially unwanted programs and adware have added browser push notifications to their weapons arsenal. Offering themselves up as browser extensions on Chrome and Firefox, these threats pose as useful plugins then haggle users with notifications. A family of search...

Update now! Firefox and Adobe updates are more critical than Microsoft’s

The most critical updates for this “Patch Tuesday” come from Firefox and Adobe. While Microsoft addresses 70 vulnerabilities in its February 2022 Patch Tuesday release, none of them are ranked as critical. Firefox and Adobe however have fixed a few issues that could be qualified as critical...

Hi, honey. It’s mom. My phone is acting funny again.

Whether it’s setting up access to a Netflix account on a smart TV or enabling personal email on an iPhone, some people—of all ages—have a hard time figuring out user-friendly technology. However, often times it's older generations that have to turn to their progeny for everything from uploading...

Steam users: Don’t fall for the “I accidentally reported you” scam

Suppose that, out of the blue, a Steam user tells you theyve accidentally reported you for something you didn’t do, like making an illegal purchase, and that your Steam account is going to be suspended. They ask you to message a Steam admin, whose profile they kindly provide, to help you sort out...

IoT forecast: Running antivirus on your smart device?

In 2016, threat actors pulled off a basic but devastating botnet attack that harnessed the power of the Internet of Things IoT. After gathering a list of 61 default username and password combinations for IoT devices, threat actors scanned the Internet for open Telnet ports and, when they found a...

Google fixes two critical Pixel vulnerabilities: Get your updates when you can!

Google has made updates available for Android 10, 11, 12 and 12L. The May Android Security Bulletin contains details of security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices. The Pixel Update Bulletin contains details of security vulnerabilities and functional improvements affecting supported Pixel...

TinyCheck: Stalkerware detection that doesn’t leave a trace

In 2019, when Malwarebytes helped found the Coalition Against Stalkerware, which brings together cybersecurity vendors and nonprofits to detect and raise awareness about stalkerware, we encountered a significant roadblock in our fight: For some users, the very detection of these potentially...

How does macOS protect against malware?

Mac users often are told that "Macs don't get viruses." This is not really true, of course. Macs can and do get infected. However, it is true that macOS provides some basic protection against malware. This protection can be quite effective in some ways, but, unfortunately, quite ineffective in...

The forgotten malvertising campaign

In recent weeks, we have noted an increase in malvertising campaigns via Google searches. Several of the threat actors we are tracking have improved their techniques to evade detection throughout the delivery chain. We believe this evolution will have a real world impact among corporate users...

Update now! ASUS fixes nine security flaws

ASUS has released firmware updates for several router models fixing two critical and several other security issues. The new firmware with accumulated security updates is available for the models GT6, GT-AXE16000, GT-AX11000 PRO, GT-AXE11000, GT-AX6000, GT-AX11000, GS-AX5400, GS-AX3000, XT9, XT8,...

Arris router vulnerability could lead to complete takeover

Security researcher Yerodin Richards has found an authenticated remote code execution RCE vulnerability in Arris routers. This is the type of router that ISPs typically provide in loan for customers telephony and internet access. After responsible disclosure Richards has published a...

Latest iPhone exploit, FORCEDENTRY, used to launch Pegasus attack against Bahraini activists

Researchers from Citizen Lab, an academic research and development lab based in the University of Toronto in Canada, has recently discovered that an exploit affecting iMessage is being used to target Bahraini activists with the Pegasus spyware. The Bahrain government and groups linked to them—suc...

Update now! Patch against vulnerabilities in Meeting Owl Pro and Whiteboard Owl devices

After a decent amount of pressure, Owl Labs has finally released updates for vulnerabilities in Meeting Owl, and Whiteboard Owl cameras. The vulnerabilities were reported to Owl Labs in January, One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-31460 has been added to the Known exploited vulnerabilities catal...

RDP brute force attacks explained

While you read these words, the chances are that somebody, somewhere, is trying to break in to your computer by guessing your password. If your computer is connected to the Internet it can be found, quickly, and if it can be found, somebody will try to break in. And it isnt like the movies. The...

4 over-hyped security vulnerabilities of 2022

A critical vulnerability can send countless organizations into chaos, as security teams read up on the vulnerability, try to figure out whether it applies to their systems, download any potential patches, and deploy those fixes to affected machines. But a lot can go wrong when a vulnerability is...

Ransomware turncoat leaks Conti data, lifts the lid on the ransomware business

Last week, The Record broke the news that a self-described "pen tester" for the infamous Conti ransomware gang, who goes by the handle m1Geelka, had leaked manuals, technical guides, and software on the underground forum XSS. According to the screenshot of m1Geelkas original forum post—and...

Why Data Privacy Day matters

Our Lock and Code special episode on Data Privacy Day, featuring guests from Mozilla, DuckDuckGo, and Electronic Frontier Foundation can be listened to here. Today, January 28, is Data Privacy Day, the annual, multinational event in which governments, companies, and schools can inform the public...

Houzz data breach: Why informing your customers is the right call

Houzz is an online platform dedicated to home renovation and design. Today February 1, 2019, they notified their customers about a data breach that reportedly happened in December 2018. Data breaches unfortunately have become a common event. In fact, we dubbed 2018 the year of the data breach...

BadRabbit: a closer look at the new version of Petya/NotPetya

Petya/NotPetya aka EternalPetya, made headlines in June, due to it's massive attack on Ukraine. Today, we noted an outbreak of a similar-looking malware, called BadRabbit, probably prepared by the same authors. Just like the previous edition, BadRabbit has an infector allowing for lateral...

Update now! Two critical flaws in Git's code found, patched

In a sponsored security source code audit, security experts from X41 D-SEC GmbH Eric Sesterhenn and Markus Vervier and GitLab Joern Schneeweisz found two notable critical flaws in Git's code. A vulnerability on Git could generally compromise source code repositories and developer systems, but...

Amazon Sidewalk starts sharing your WiFi tomorrow, thanks

Amazon smart device owners only have until June 8 to opt out of a new program that will group their Echo speakers and Ring doorbells into a shared wireless network with their neighbors, a new feature that the shopping giant claims will provide better stability for smart devices during initial set...

Browser push notifications: a feature asking to be abused

“I’m seeing a lot of ads popping up in the corner of my screen, and the Malwarebytes scan does not show there is anything wrong. It says my computer is clean. So what's happening?” Our support team runs into questions like this regularly, but the volume seems to be increasing lately. In most of...

A coin miner with a “Heaven’s Gate”

You might call the last two years the years of ransomware. Ransomware was, without a doubt, the most popular type of malware. But at the end of last year, we started observing that ransomware was losing its popularity to coin miners. It is very much possible that this trend will grow as 2018...

Update now—July Patch Tuesday patches include fix for exploited zero-day

It’s time to triage a lot of patching again. Microsoft’s July Patch Tuesday includes an actively exploited local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Windows Client/Server Runtime Subsystem CSRSS. This vulnerability immediately made it to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CI...

Update now! Microsoft patches three zero-day vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday

The updates for Microsofts March 2022 Patch Tuesday should fix 92 vulnerabilities, including three zero-day vulnerabilities. Of the 92 vulnerabilities, 21 are for Microsoft Edge and originate from the Chromium Project. Of the 71 others, three are classified as Critical because they allow remote...

[Update: CISA issues Log4j vulnerabilities scanner] Log4j zero-day “Log4Shell” arrives just in time to ruin your weekend

If youre running a service that relies on Apache Struts or uses the popular Apache Log4j utility we hope you havent made plans for the weekend. An exploit listed as CVE-2021-44228 was made public on December 9, 2021. The exploit is simple, easy to trigger, and can be used to perform remote code...

Google patches zero-day vulnerability, and others, in Android

Google has issued security patches for the Android Operating System. In total, the patches address 39 vulnerabilities. There are indications that one of the patched vulnerabilities may be under limited, targeted exploitation. The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in...

Key considerations for building vs. buying identity access management solutions

Time and time again, organizations learn the hard way that no matter which security solutions they have in place, if they haven’t properly secured the end user, their efforts can be easily rendered moot. The classic slip-up most often associated with end-user-turned-insider-threat is falling for ...

Has two-factor authentication been defeated? A spotlight on 2FA’s latest challenge

Multiple news reports about the defeat of two-factor authentication 2FA have been making rounds lately. In November 2018, our friends at ESET discovered a purported Android battery utility tool called “Optimization Android” from a third-party app store. This app was designed to steal money from a...

Has Facebook leaked your phone number?

Unless you keep your social media at a pole’s distance, you have probably heard that an absolutely enormous dataset—containing over 500 million phone numbers—has been made public. These phone numbers have been in the hands of some cybercriminals since 2019 due to a vulnerability in Facebook that...

"TootRoot" Mastodon vulnerabilities fixed: Admins, patch now!

One of Twitters big rivals, Mastodon, recently finished fixing four issues which in the worst case allowed for the creation of files on the instances server. Mastodon, whose main selling point is lots of separate communities living on different servers yet still able to communicate, was notified ...

Study explores clickjacking problem across top Alexa-ranked websites

Clickjacking has been around for a long time, working hand-in-hand with the unwitting person doing the clicking to send them to parts unknown—often at the expense of site owners. Scammers achieve this by hiding the page object the victim thinks they’re clicking on under a layer or layers of...

The Hidden Bee infection chain, part 1: the stegano pack

About a year ago, we described the Hidden Bee miner delivered by the Underminer Exploit Kit. Hidden Bee has a complex and multi-layered internal structure that is unusual among cybercrime toolkits, making it an interesting phenomenon on the threat landscape. That's why we're dedicating a series o...

Say hello to Lord Exploit Kit

Just as we had wrapped up our summer review of exploit kits, a new player entered the scene. Lord EK, as it is calling itself, was caught by Virus Bulletin's Adrian Luca while replaying malvertising chains. In this blog post, we do a quick review of this exploit kit based on what we have collecte...

The Advanced Persistent Threat files: APT10

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...

A week in security (November 5 – 11)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we looked at browser lockers that fly under the radar with complete obfuscation, transport and logistics in our series about compromising vital infrastructure, Google logins now requiring JavaScript, how to create a sticky cybersecurity training program, and an...

APC warns about critical vulnerabilities in online UPS monitoring software

In a security notification, APC has warned home and corporate users about critical vulnerabilities in the software used to monitor and control their UPS systems online. APC, which started as the American Power Conversion in 1981, today is a part of Schneider Electric™. APC is an industry leader i...

Inter skimming kit used in homoglyph attacks

As we continue to track web threats and credit card skimming in particular, we often rediscover techniques weve encountered elsewhere before. In this post, we share a recent find that involves what is known as an homoglyph attack. This technique has been exploited for some time already, especiall...

What role does data destruction play in cybersecurity?

When organization leaders think about cybersecurity, it's usually about which tools and practices they need to add to their stack—email protection, firewalls, network and endpoint security, employee awareness training, AI and machine-learning technology—you get the idea. What's not often consider...

How gamers can protect against increasing cyberthreats

A few years ago, cybersecurity scryers predicted that the video gaming industry would be the next big target of cybercriminals. Whether this will come true in the future or not, the average gamer may have little to no idea of what awaits them, much less be prepared for it. In fact, while generall...

Remcos RAT delivered via Visual Basic

This blog post was authored by Erika Noerenberg Introduction Over the past months, Malwarebytes researchers have been tracking a unique malspam campaign delivering the Remcos remote access trojan RAT via financially-themed emails. Remcos is often delivered via malicious documents or archive files...

Research claims Google Pixel phones share 20 times more data than iPhones

If youre an Android phone user, now might be a good time to invest in a good pair of ear plugs. Fans of iPhones arent known for being shy when it comes to telling Android users that Apple products are superior, and things may be about to get worse, thanks to a new research paper pdf. Researchers ...

Update Android now! Two critical vulnerabilities patched

The March security updates for Android include fixes for two critical remote code execution RCE vulnerabilities impacting Android systems running versions 11, 12, 12L, and 13. Users should update as soon as they can. The March 2023 Android Security Bulletin contains the details of the security...

GoAnywhere zero-day opened door to Clop ransomware

A semi-active ransomware group has claimed it is behind a string of attacks which have taken advantage of a zero-day vulnerability in GoAywhere MFT. The Russian-linked Clop ransomware group says it was able to remotely attack private systems using exposed GoAnywhere MFT administration consoles...

Own an older iPhone? Check you're on the latest version to avoid this bug

In December, 2022, we warned our readers about an actively exploited vulnerability in Apples WebKit. Back then we wondered why Apple specifically stated that the issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1. At the time, our resident Apple expert Thomas...