Google’s Bard conversations turn up in search results

Google is coming under scrutiny after people discovered transcripts of conversations with its AI chatbot Bard are being indexed in Google search results. Bard is Googles answer to ChatGPT, and allows users to have conversations with an AI. Services like these have attracted a lot of attention,...

A week in security (September 11 - September 17)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Europol lifts the lid on cybercrime tactics Malwarebytes wins every Q2 MRG Effitas award & scores 100% on new phishing test Watch out, this LastPass email with "Important information about your account" is a phish iPhone 15 launch: Wonderlust scammers rear their...

Major cyberattack leaves MGM Resorts reeling

A major incident impacting MGM Resorts has caused computer shutdowns all over the US. The systems most impacted are tied to casinos and hotel computer systems. According to the AP, locations caught by this shutdown range from New York and Ohio to Michigan and Mississippi. At this point Id link to...

Google strengthens its Workplace suite protection

Google has announced the strengthening of safeguard measures for its Workspace customers. You may well be using Workspace without realising it. If youre using a Google product such as Gmail, Calendar, Drive, or Google Docs Editors Suite among other apps, then congratulations: you are fully inside...

Beware malware posing as beta versions of legitimate apps, warns FBI

The FBI has issued a warning that cybercriminals are embedding malicious code in mobile beta-testing apps in attempts to defraud potential victims. The victims are typically contacted on dating sites and social media, and in some cases they are promised incentives such as large financial payouts...

A week in security (July 24 - July 30)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Zimbra issues awaited patch for actively exploited vulnerability Patch now! Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile Authentication vulnerability used in the wild 60,000 Androids have stalkerware-type app Spyhide installed Ransomware groups claim responsibility for...

Ransomware making big money through "big game hunting"

Ransomware generates big money for the groups behind it, with new research confirming some of the scale of the problem. Chainalysis, a blockchain research firm, looked at data from monitored cryptocurrency wallets, concluding that around $449 million has been taken from victims in the last six...

A week in security (June 26 - July 2)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: A proxyjacking campaign is looking for vulnerable SSH servers New technique can defeat voice authentication "after only six tries" "Free" Evil Dead Rise movie scam lurks in Amazon listings Spyware app LetMeSpy hacked, tracked user data posted online Online safety...

Online safety tips for LGBTQIA+ communities

The internet is great for bringing people together, helping you feel part of a community, and staying in touch with your nearest and dearest. But it can also be a nasty place - from malware to scammers, to people just being plain awful to others. It's probably not surprising to read that recent...

Malvertising: A stealthy precursor to infostealers and ransomware attacks

This article is based on research by Jerome Segura, Senior Director of Threat Intelligence at Malwarebytes, who oversees data collection from spam feeds and telemetry to identify the most relevant threats. Malvertising, the practice of using online ads to spread malware, can have dire...

Employee guilty of joining ransomware attack on his own company

A 28-year old IT Security Analyst pleaded guilty and will consequently be convicted of blackmail and unauthorized access to a computer with intent to commit other offences. It all started when the UK gene and cell therapy company Oxford BioMedica fell victim to a cybersecurity incident which...

Malvertising via brand impersonation is back again

Web search is about to embark on a new journey thanks to artificial intelligence technology that online giants such as Microsoft and Google are experimenting with. Yet, there is a problem when it comes to malicious ads displayed by search engines that AI likely won't be able to fix. In recent...

The rise of "Franken-ransomware," with Allan Liska: Lock and Code S04E11

Ransomware is becoming bespoke, and that could mean trouble for businesses and law enforcement investigators. It wasn't always like this. For a few years now, ransomware operators have congregated around a relatively new model of crime called "Ransomware-as-a-Service." In the...

Would-be hitman busted after being fooled by parody website

A member of the Air National Guard is facing federal charges after applying for a job online as an assassin. According to a Justice Department press release, Josiah Ernesto Garcia from Hermitage, Tennessee, was arrested by an undercover federal agent at a park on April 12, 2023. The FBI affidavit...

Introducing the Malwarebytes Admin app: Endpoint security at your fingertips

If youre on the beach sipping piña coladas, the last thing you probably want to do is rush to your desktop and address a critical security issue. And yet, this is the reality for many IT security professionals today. Regardless of the time or current location, security pros are expected to drop...

Port scan attacks: Protecting your business from RDP attacks and Mirai botnets

Compromised IP addresses and domains--otherwise legitimate sites that are exploited by hackers without the owner's knowledge--are frequently utilized to conduct port scanning attacks. Port scanning involves systematically scanning a computer network for open ports, which can then be exploited by...

Sextortion "assistance" scammers con victims further

The FBI is warning of a particular aspect of sextortion scams: Supposed organisations that offer "help" to remove stolen images, often at a significant financial cost and no guarantee of success. Sextortion, the act of blackmailing individuals for cash in return for not leaking sensitive imagery...

Uber data theft: Driver info stolen after law firm breached

Uber, yet again, has become a victim of data theft following a third-party breach. This time, threat actors have aimed at the company's law firm, Genova Burns. Data of Uber's drivers may have been swiped during the security incident. According to the letter sent to affected drivers, the firm beca...

2023 State of Malware Report: What the channel needs to know to stay ahead of threats

The channel, comprising managed service providers MSPs, Systems Integrators SIs, value-added resellers VARs, and more, plays a vital role in providing cybersecurity for companies around the globe today. But as malware evolves and cyberattacks become more common, keeping up with the top threats to...

3 tips for creating backups your organization can rely on when ransomware strikes

Backups are an organization's last line of defense against ransomware, because comprehensive, offline, offsite backups give you a chance to restore or rebuild your computers without paying a criminal for a decryption key. Unfortunately, many organizations don't realize how important it is to make...

Ransomware gunning for transport sector's OT systems next

ENISA the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity has reason to believe that ransomware gangs will begin targeting transportation operational technology OT systems in the foreseeable future. This finding is further explored in the agency's 50-page report entitled ENISA Threat Landscape: Transport...

Hackers threaten to leak STALKER 2 assets if devs don’t heed demands

Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World has announced it was breached by Russian hacktivists who stole assets related to the much-awaited game STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl. A message from GSC Game World team pic.twitter.com/rqRM0tFZmO -- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OFFICIAL @stalkerthegame March 12, 2023...

The 5 most dangerous cyberthreats facing businesses this year

Which of the myriad, extant cyberthreats should your business be paying the most attention to in 2023? Thats the question we set out to answer in this years annual State of Malware report, and the answers might surprise you. To understand why, you need to know what makes this years report so...

Two Supreme Court cases could change the Internet as we know it

The Supreme Court is about to reconsider Section 230, a law thats been the foundation of the way we have used the Internet for decades. The court will be handling a few cases that at first glance are about online platforms' liability for hosting accounts from foreign terrorists. But at a deeper...

CISA releases advice on how to safeguard K–12 organizations

To help K-12 schools and school districts in their struggle against cybercrime the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has released the report, Protecting Our Future: Partnering to Safeguard K-12 organizations from Cybersecurity Threats. A cybersecurity incident can significantly...

Electronic Sales Suppression Tools are cooking the books

When you see point of sale software in the news, its usually because the terminal has been compromised and is now stealing payment details used in the device. Insecure stores, whether compromised as part of an inside job or a phishing attack, are a big problem for both buyers and the store itself...

Hive Social pulls the plug on itself after security flaws found

You may well have changed your social media site of choice recently, but that doesnt mean the security implications of less familiar sites and services can be ignored. For the sites themselves, coping with an influx of new users can be nothing short of a large headache. And even the more...

An odd kind of cybercrime: Gift vouchers, medical records, and...food

Someone with a gift for technology but a nasty habit of using it for very bad things has been spared from going to jail with a suspended sentence. Peter Foy, 18 at the time of his antics, racked up a remarkable, and slightly peculiar, list of compromises before being brought before the court. A...

Third-party application patching: Everything you need to know for your business

Patch management that is consistent and efficient has never been more critical in keeping your security infrastructure up to date and secure. Although todays endpoint management solutions include patch management functionalities, third-party patching is an area that shouldnt be forgotten. In this...

White House unveils Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

On Tuesday, the Biden-Harris Administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy OSTP unveiled a new Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which lists five principles to guide the design, use, and development of intelligence-based automated systems "to protect the American public in the age of...

Admin from hell facing 10 years for sabotaging ex-employer's network

The perils of the insider threats are often talked about in abstract terms, probably because most organisations want to keep a lid on internally-based bad actors. Every so often, concrete details emerge to highlight what a thoroughly rotten day a rogue employee can inflict on everybody else thoug...

A week in security (September 26 – October 2)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Why almost everything we told you about passwords was wrong Two new Exchange Server zero-days in the wild Local government cybersecurity: 5 best practices Optus data breach "attacker" says sorry, it was a mistake Fast Company hacked to send obscene and racist...

5 things to teach your kids about social media

With children now back at school, its time to think about social media, and their use of it. Are they already firing out tweets, chatting in Discord channels, or even just looking to set up a Tik-Tok account? Now is the time to consider giving your kids some security and privacy tips for all thei...

School app Seesaw compromised to send shock NSFW image

On Wednesday, parents and teachers reported that student learning platform, Seesaw, had been hacked after some users received an infamous explicit photo known as "goatse" on private chats. Schools from districts in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas...

The North Face hit by credential stuffing attack

The North Face clothing brand, which specialises in outdoor and heavy weather outerwear, has experienced a "large-scale" credential stuffing attack. This has resulted in no fewer than 194,905 accounts being compromised. What is credential stuffing, and how did it affect The North Face customers?...

Instagram receives record fine of $400M for abuse of children's data

Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner DPC, the lead regulator in Europe for Meta and other tech giants, has slapped Instagram with a fine of €405M--roughly equivalent to $402M--following an investigation on how the company handled children's data. In the investigation that started in 2020, the D...

A week in security (August 15 - August 21)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Donut breach: Lessons from pen-tester Mike Miller: Lock and Code S03E17 Introducing Malwarebytes Cloud Storage Scanning: How to scan for malware in cloud file storage repositories JSSLoader: the shellcode edition CISA and FBI issue alert about Zeppelin ransomware H...

Viral video drives malvertising on social media platform

This blog post was authored by Jerome Segura Viral content shared on social media is highly coveted since it gets a lot of impressions and engagement. Unfortunately, the people who push this kind of content don't always have the best of intentions. We recently identified a malvertising campaign o...

Twilio breached after social engineering attack on employees

Cloud-based communication platform provider Twilio has announced a breach via a social engineering attack on employees. On August 4, 2022, Twilio says it became aware of unauthorized access to information related to a limited number of Twilio customer accounts, through the social engineering atta...

Phishy calls and emails play on energy cost increase fears

Gas and electricity price concerns are rife at the moment, with spiralling costs and bigger increases waiting down the line. Sadly this makes the subject valuable material for fraudsters, playing into people's fears with a dash of social engineering to make them worse off than they were previousl...

DHS says to update your Emergency Alert Systems immediately

The Department of Homeland Security has issued an advisory after vulnerabilities were found in its Emergency Alert Systems EAS. EAS technology is designed to fire out warning messages during times of national emergency. It can be used to warn of coastal flooding, earthquakes, child abduction,...

Ransomware review: July 2022

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom. In July, LockBit maintained...

NetStandard attack should make Managed Service Providers sit up and take notice

Managed Service Providers MSPs, organizations that allow companies to outsource a variety of IT and security functions, are a growing market. Because they are a potential gateway to lots of company networks they make a very attractive target for cybercriminals. In a recent threat advisory Huntres...

When a sextortion victim fights back

When Katie Yates suddenly started receiving nude photos of her friend, Natalie Claus, over on Snapchat, she instantly recognized that Claus had just become a victim of a sextortion attack. She also knew how Claus should respond. This happened in December 2019 when Claus was a sophomore. Both were...

Radioactivity monitoring and warning system hacked, disabled by attackers

The Spanish police arrested two people under the accusation of tampering with the Red de Alerta a la Radiactividad RAR. The RAR is part of the Spanish national security systems and in use to monitor gamma radiation levels across the country. The network is managed, operated and maintained by the...

Anti-vaxxer dating site exposes user data

An anti-vax dating site has been revealed as shockingly easy to compromise by security researchers. Many major aspects of the site, from membership subscriptions to support tickets, were found to be vulnerable. The site, called Unjected, has been around since last year. It functions as a sort of...

Ransomware rolled through business defenses in Q2 2022

Ransomware has given security professionals a headache for the better part of a decade. Fast forward to 2022, and the headache has become a migraine—not just for IT teams but business owners, employees, and customers as well. Over the last three months, ransomware gangs have increased the pressur...

4 ways businesses can save money on cyber insurance

So, your business has just suffered a data breach and it’s time to dig deep in your pockets to pay all the resulting expenses. Without cyber insurance, you can expect to pay a dizzying amount of cash. In 2022 alone, the average cost of a data breach for businesses under 1,000 employees was close ...

Cloud-based malware is on the rise. How can you secure your business?

There’s a lot of reasons to think the cloud is more secure than on-prem servers, from better data durability to more consistent patch management — but even so, there are many threats to cloud security businesses should address. Cloud-based malware is one of them. Indeed, while cloud environments...

Brave Search wants to replace Google’s biased search results with yours

Brave Search, Brave Softwares privacy search engine, just turned one. To celebrate, the company says it is moving the search engine out of its beta phase to become the default search engine for all Brave browser users. Goodbye, Google? Not entirely. In May 2015, Mozilla alumni Brendan Eich and...