Old Play Store apps served notice by upcoming API level changes

Starting very soon, old and outdated apps on the Google Play Store will no longer be available to download. A major clearout is coming, and if you’re an app developer it may be time to overhaul your product or face Android-centric oblivion. What’s happening? Android makes use of APIs application...

“Free easter chocolate basket” is a social media scam after your personal details

Holidays inspire fraudsters and scammers to create timely and effective ways to string people along and get them to give up either their money or their personal information. This is the case in this chocolate-themed scam. Cadbury UK has issued a warning to its 315,000 followers on Twitter about a...

Attacks on Ukraine communications are a major part of the war

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war on the battlefield has been accompanied by cyber attacks. Those attacks against critical infrastructure have knocked out banking and defense platforms, mostly by targeting several communication systems. In a timeline set up by NetBlocks,...

A week in security (March 7 – March 13)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: The struggle to reduce bug-fixing time is real Update now! Mozilla patches two actively exploited vulnerabilities Google takes on Docs notification spammers When fake dating profiles try the military approach Azure AutoWarp brings automation headaches RagnarLocker...

RagnarLocker ransomware gang breached 52 critical infrastructure organizations

In a FLASH publication issued by the FBI in coordination with DHS/CISA, the FBI says it has identified at least 52 organizations across 10 critical infrastructure sectors affected by RagnarLocker ransomware, including organizations in the critical manufacturing, energy, financial services,...

Meta blocks Russia-Ukraine disinformation campaigns on Facebook, Instagram

Meta says it has detected and removed two disinformation campaigns regarding the current Russia-Ukraine war. These campaigns, it says, were run by groups in Russia and Ukraine to target Ukraine users. In the post, Nathaniel Gleicher, Metas head of security policy, and David Agranovich, Metas...

How Crisis Text Line crossed the line in the public’s mind: Lock and Code S03E05

Last month, Politico reported that Crisis Text Line, a national mental health support nonprofit whose volunteers help people through text-based chats, was sharing those chats with a for-profit company that Crisis Text Line spun-off in an attempt to boost funding for itself. That for-profit ventur...

A week in security (February 21 – February 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Potential cybersecurity impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Cyber lures and threats in the context of the war in Ukraine CISA warns of cyberespionage by Iranian APT “MuddyWater” Google and Microsoft accused of feeding smaller search engines spam ads Cyclops Bli...

Ransomware gang hits 49ers’ network before Super Bowl kick off

The San Francisco 49ers has confirmed that it has been hit by a ransomware attack. The announcement came just hours before the biggest football game of the year, Sundays Super Bowl between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams. In a boilerplate statement to BleepingComputer, the 49ers...

Apple accidentally kept some Siri recordings from iPhones, even for opted-out users

Apple’s release of iOS 15.4 beta 2 completes the fix for a bug that may have recorded interactions with Siri without permission on some devices. Apple has fixed this bug that was introduced in iOS 15 and accidentally kept some recordings, regardless of whether you opted out or not. The bug was...

“We absolutely do not care about you”: Sugar ransomware targets individuals

Ransomware tends to target organizations. Corporations not only house a trove of valuable data they cant function without, but they are also expected to cough up a considerable amount of ransom money in exchange for their encrypted files. And while corporations struggle to keep up with attacks,...

Beware bogus OperaGX sponsorship offers

If you’re a YouTuber, watch out for bogus Opera missives winging their way to you. The Browser team has had to send out a warning in relation to scammy antics trading on their good name. At a time when people are stretched for cash, nothing could be better than a promo mail bearing good news...

Google sued over deceptive location tracking

Four Attorneys General AG from the District of Columbia and the states of Indiana, Texas, and Washington have filed separate lawsuits agains Google for allegedly misleading its users into believing that they are no longer tracking their location when they deliberately pause the "Location History"...

A week in security (January 10 – 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ransomware cyberattack forces New Mexico jail to lock down Some Android users can disable 2G now and why that is a good thing Phishers on the prowl with fake parking meter QR codes Update now: Microsoft patches 97 bugs including 6 zero-days and a wormable one...

Phishers on the prowl with fake parking meter QR codes

QR codes come and go as a threat. The last time we wrote about them they were causing problems at gas stations, and by sheer chance this latest outing shares vehicular related subject matter. Law enforcement in the US is sounding the alarm regarding parking meters. A quick refresher QR Quick...

Intimate photo hacker spared from jail, said he “liked the detective work”

Michael Grime, a British games programmer, has escaped jail after using stolen credentials to access several womens personal email accounts and social media accounts in order to steal their private and intimate photos. Grime was caught by the National Crime Agency NCA as part of an operation...

A week in security (January 3 – 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ransomware attacks Finalsite, renders 8,000 school sites unreachable for days Patchwork APT caught in its own web Sophisticated phishing scheme spent years robbing authors of their unpublished work Google and Facebook fined $240 million for making cookies hard to...

Card skimmers strike Sotheby’s in Brightcove supply chain attack

Over 100 real estate websites have been compromised by the same web skimmer in a supply chain attack. So what happened? On Monday, January 3, Palo Alto said it had found a supply chain attack that used a cloud video platform to distribute skimmer campaigns. The attacker injected the skimmer’s...

$10m of funds goes missing in what appears to be a cryptocurrency rug-pull

There’s a lot of concern in the cryptocurrency realm at the moment. A yield farming platform "utilizing arbitrage to gain optimal yield with low risk" has gone AWOL. Site down, Twitter account deleted, no word from the team behind it explaining what happened. Worst of all, some $10 million worth ...

Customer support scammers take aim at NFT enthusiasts

Adidas has been making waves in the NFT space with a collection of footwear/bored ape crossover sales. WEN? EARLY ACCESS MINTING STARTS NOW First look of the collaborative NFT with @gmoneyNFT @punkscomic and @BoredApeYC Good luck and TracksuitUp pic.twitter.com/REYOSdRbNT -- adidas Originals...

5 security lessons from 18 months of working from home

A little more than 20 months ago, many people around the world were asked or instructed to work from home to help slow the spread of COVID-19. It caused a seismic change to the way we all do business. Now, our latest research reveals how IT decision makers security concerns have been changed by...

Fake job interviews plague major game developers like Riot Games and Rockstar

If you’re job hunting at the moment, be on your guard. The pandemic is still around. Lots of people are in need of employment. Scammers are all too happy to string folks along with bogus employment offers, as is the case here. How have they managed to snare prospective job hunters? Riding on the...

Smart TV adverts put a wrinkle in your programming

Smart TVs are back in the news due to the potential pitfalls of embedded advertising. It may come as a surprise to some, but these devices aren’t particularly new. As far back as 2013, security researchers were already exploring the issues related to internet connected televisions in a home...

Is Apple’s Safari browser the last, best hope for web privacy?

What browser do you use? Theres a good chance—roughly one in seven—that its Google Chrome. And even if you prefer a different browser, theres a good chance that youre using something thats based on Google Chrome, such as Edge, Vivaldi, Chromium, Brave, or Opera. After a decade and and a half of...

Making better cybersecurity training: Q&A with Malwarebytes expert Kelsey Prichard

If you hadn’t noticed by now, we are in the first week of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which, according to the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency in the United States, means that we should all consider how people, organizations, and businesses can “be cyber smart” this ye...

Criminals exploited weak checks and old tech to pull off vast COVID benefit fraud

In life, when you encounter something momentuous—a sudden job loss, a routine check-up that revealed an illness you cant afford the medical bills for—you can be assured that the federal or state government has benefits you can apply for it. And where there are benefits, you can also be assured th...

Caught in the payment fraud net: when, not if?

Sometimes, I think there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and some form of payment fraud. Security reporter Danny Palmer experienced this a little while ago, and has spent a significant amount of time tracking the journey of his card details from the UK to Suriname. His deep-dive...

Business email compromise: gunning for goal

The evergreen peril of business email compromise BEC finds itself in the news once more. This time, major English Premier League football teams almost fell victim to their trickery, to the tune of £1 million. First half: fraudsters on the offensive Somebody compromised a Managing Director’s email...

PSA: Users with landlines are more vulnerable to scams

It’s time to have “the talk” with your parents, relatives, and loved ones. Anyone still using a landline must be warned: having a home phone makes you particularly vulnerable to scams. We know here at Malwarebytes that our readers are often the unofficial “IT” department for their families,...

Internet Shortcut used in Necurs malspam campaign

The Necurs botnet continues to be one of the most prolific malicious spam distributors, with regular waves of carefully-crafted attachments that are used to download malware. The majority of malspam campaigns that we track are targeting Microsoft Office with documents containing either macros or...

Online security tips for Valentine’s Day: how to beat the cheats

Valentine's Day is upon us once more, and so are lots of dating-friendly security tips. Read on and secure your profile, alongside one hopes the love of your life. 1. Not so hot singles in your area Many dating apps have geotagging enabled, regardless of whether you created your profile on a...

A state of constant uncertainty or uncertain constancy? Fast flux explained

Last August, WireX made headlines. For one thing, it was dubbed the first-known DDoS botnet that used the Android platform. For another, it used a technique that—for those who have been around in the industry for quite a while now—rung familiar in the ears: fast flux. In the context of...

Petya-esque ransomware is spreading across the world

UPDATE 6/29/2017 1045 PST: According to information uncovered within Malwarebytes Labs, we have determined that this ransomware variant is coded to erase a unique and randomly generated key that is used to encrypt the MFT Master File Table. The destruction of the Salsa20 key makes it very unlikel...

Watch out for fake TikTok Shops trying to steal your money

TikTok Shop is a real, functioning e-commerce feature built into the TikTok app, allowing users to buy goods without ever leaving TikTok. As it's grown in popularity, scammers have begun cloning its appearance.Storefronts that reproduce its look, its trust badges, and its category layout closely...

Travelers targeted when logging into hotel Wi-Fi networks

Microsoft has warned that hotel, conference, and other hospitality Wi-Fi networks are being actively abused by a Russian group to target travelers worldwide. The campaign, dubbed "CaptiveCrunch" turns a routine Wi-Fi login moment into an opportunity to compromise corporate accounts and devices...

The AI Act kicks into action, forces companies to be clear about AI chatbots

The European Union EU has started enforcing key parts of the AI Act, with immediate, visible consequences for chatbots, deepfakes and other consumer‑facing Artificial Intelligence AI systems. From August 2, what you'll likely notice are more "this is AI" labels, clearer rules for powerful...

Fake Fortnite rewards are stealing players’ accounts

Fortnite scam pages like the ones below appear by the dozen every day, recycled endlessly under different names and designs. One version promises $50 from a fake superhero collaboration. Another claims it can calculate what your locker is worth. Both lead to the same destination: a fake Epic Game...

Sextortion scammers are exploiting ShinyHunters data leaks

Sextortion scammers are using email addresses from data leaked by the ShinyHunters hacking group to add some credibility to their feeble attempts to convince people they have embarrassing information about them. Sextortion emails are messages claiming that the scammer recorded you through your...

July 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 622 Microsoft CVEs, including three zero-days

Just one month ago, June 2026 Patch Tuesday broke Microsoft’s previous record with 206 CVEs and three zero‑days. July now triples that count, reinforcing that the era of “small” Patch Tuesdays may be over as AI‑driven vulnerability discovery ramps up. The update includes 59 critical...

Claude Code’s hidden tracker was an “experiment,” says Anthropic

As a developer, you want to use tools you can trust and rely on. One researcher took that idea seriously enough to scrutinize their local Claude Code 2.1.196 installation. For developers using AI assistants with access to their code, files, and terminal, understanding what those tools are doing...

Microsoft working on a fix for RoguePlanet, a flaw that grants full PC control

A publicly available exploit called RoguePlanet can give attackers the highest level of access on Windows systems. Microsoft has confirmed the vulnerability and says it's working on a security update. RoguePlanet is tracked under CVE-2026-50656, where it’s described as a Microsoft Defender...

Kodak confirms breach as ShinyHunters’ leak threat reaches deadline

The Eastman Kodak Company Kodak confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is investigating a security breach after the ShinyHunters extortion group claimed responsibility for the incident. Kodak is the latest organization to land on the group's leak site. ShinyHunters claims it stole more than 2.2...

YouTube wants your face to fight deepfakes

If you're worried about deepfake likenesses of yourself showing up online, you're not alone; YouTube is worried for you. It wants to protect you by having you upload a selfie video and government ID to its site. The idea is that the video giant will use its own AI to patrol the service for fake...

Fake Google Antigravity downloads are stealing accounts in minutes

Somebody went looking for Google’s new Antigravity coding tool this week, clicked download, ran the installer, and got exactly what they thought they were getting. Antigravity installed cleanly. A shortcut appeared on the desktop. The application opened and worked. Nothing looked or felt wrong. B...

Omnistealer uses the blockchain to steal everything it can

A new infostealer dubbed Omnistealer is turning the blockchain into a permanent malware hosting platform, which is bad news for both companies and everyday users. It’s pretty common for malware to store its payload on a public platform, ideally one that adds some trustworthiness to the download...

New macOS security feature will alert users about possible ClickFix attacks

Rumor has it that Apple deployed a new security feature in the fight against ClickFix. The new feature will be available for macOS Tahoe 26.4 and it will warn Mac users if they paste certain commands into the Terminal app that might be harmful. If such a command is pasted, macOS will warn the use...

Purchase order attachment isn’t a PDF. It’s phishing for your password

An attachment named New PO 500PCS.pdf.hTM, posing as a purchase order in PDF form, turned out to be something entirely different: a credential-harvesting web page that quietly sent passwords and IP/location data straight to a Telegram bot controlled by an attacker. Imagine you’re in accounts...

Betterment data breach might be worse than we thought

Betterment LLC is an investment advisor registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission SEC. The company disclosed a January 2026 incident in which an attacker used social engineering to access a third‑party platform used for customer communications, then abused it to send crypto‑themed...

Outlook add-in goes rogue and steals 4,000 credentials and payment data

Researchers found a malicious Microsoft Outlook add-in which was able to steal 4,000 stolen Microsoft account credentials, credit card numbers, and banking security answers. How is it possible that the Microsoft Office Add-in Store ended listing an add-in that silently loaded a phishing kit insid...

Received an Instagram password reset email? Here’s what you need to know

Last week, many Instagram users began receiving unsolicited emails from the platform that warned about a password reset request. The message said: “Hi username, We got a request to reset your Instagram password. If you ignore this message, your password will not be changed. If you didn’t request ...