How AI made scams more convincing in 2025

This blog is part of a series where we highlight new or fast-evolving threats in consumer security. This one focuses on howAI is being used to design more realistic campaigns, accelerate social engineering, and how AI agents can be used to target individuals. Most cybercriminals stick with what...

Chrome extension slurps up AI chats after users installed it for privacy

This case highlights a growing grey area in consumer privacy: data collection that is technically disclosed, but so far outside user expectations that most people would never knowingly agree to it. The next time you tell an AI chat assistant your deepest secrets, think twice; you never know who o...

Inside a purchase order PDF phishing campaign

A PDF named "NEW Purchase Order 52177236.pdf" turned out to be a phishing lure. So we analyzed the phishing script behind it. A customer contacted me when Malwarebytes blocked the link inside a “purchase order” email they had received. Malwarebytes blocked this ionoscloud.com subdomain When I...

New Android malware lets criminals control your phone and drain your bank account

Albiriox is a new family of Android banking malware that gives attackers live remote control over infected phones, letting them quietly drain bank and crypto accounts during real sessions. Researchers have analyzed a new Android malware family called Albiriox which is showing signs of developing...

Ransomware gang claims Conduent breach: what you should watch for next [updated]

Update – October 30, 2025: New information confirms that Conduent’s 2024 breach has impacted over 10.5 million people, based on notifications filed with multiple state attorneys general. The largest disclosure came from the Oregon government, which reported a total of 10.5 million affected US...

Phishing scam uses fake death notices to trick LastPass users

LastPass has alerted users about a new phishing attack that claims the recipient has died. According to the message, a family member has submitted a death certificate to gain access to the recipient’s password vault. A link in the phishing email, supposedly to stop the request, leads to a fake pa...

Beware of Zelle transfer scams

As we have said many times before, falling for a scam can happen to the best of us. And it can ruin lives. In our podcast How a scam hunter got scammed, scam hunter Julie-Anne Kearns talked about how she had been duped by people pretending to be from HMRC, which is the UK’s version of the US...

Fake bank ads on Instagram scam victims out of money

Ads on Instagram—including deepfake videos—are impersonating trusted financial institutions like Bank of Montreal BMO and EQ Bank Equitable Bank in order to scam people, according to BleepingComputer. There are some variations in how the scammers approach this. Some use Artificial Intelligence AI...

Booking.com reservation abused as cybercriminals steal from travelers

Robert Woodford, a recruitment marketing specialist, recently shared on LinkedIn how he fell victim to a highly sophisticated scam while booking a hotel in Verona through Booking.com, providing a striking example of how attacks on the hospitality industry affect travelers. After completing a...

“Your privacy is a promise we don’t break”: Dating app Raw exposes sensitive user data

Any app that hands over user data is a concern, but leaky dating apps are especially worrying given the sensitivity of the data involved. A relatively new app called Raw that aims to rewrite the rules of dating is the latest to trip over its coattails by exposing user data to…well, anyone who ask...

On world password day, Microsoft says fewer passwords, more passkeys

And we agree. If there is a cybersecurity themed day that we would like to get rid as soon as possible it’s world password day. Sorry, old friend, but you’re outdated, and it looks like your days are numbered. Let's switch to passkeys. To quote Microsoft: “As the world shifts from passwords to...

Zero-day attacks on browsers and smartphones drop, says Google

Cybercriminals are having less success targeting end-user technology with zero-day attacks, said Google's security team this week. While most attacks do still target personal technology like smartphones and browsers, the focus is moving increasingly to enterprise tech. Zero-day vulnerabilities ar...

A week in security (April 21 – April 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: AI is getting "creepy good" at geo-guessing Zoom attack tricks victims into allowing remote access to install malware and steal money Android malware turns phones into malicious tap-to-pay machines 4.7 million customers’ data accidentally leaked to Google by Blue...

Hi, robot: Half of all internet traffic now automated

If you sometimes feel that the internet isn't the same vibrant place it used to be, you're not alone. New research suggests that most of the traffic traversing the network isn't human at all. Bots software programs that interact with web sites have been ubiquitous for years. But in its 2025 Bad B...

AMOS and Lumma stealers actively spread to Reddit users

We were alerted to Mac and Windows stealers currently distributed via Reddit posts targeting users engaging in cryptocurrency trading. One of the common lures is a cracked software version of the popular trading platform TradingView. The crooks are posting links to both Windows and Mac installers...

SecTopRAT bundled in Chrome installer distributed via Google Ads

Criminals are once again abusing Google Ads to trick users into downloading malware. Ironically, this time the bait is a malicious ad for Google Chrome, the world's most popular browser. Victims who click the ad land on a fraudulent Google Sites page designed as a intermediary portal, similar to...

WhatsApp says Paragon is spying on specific users

WhatsApp has accused the professional spyware company Paragon of spying on a select group of users. WhatsApp, the Meta-owned, end-to-end encrypted messaging platform, said it has reliable information that nearly 100 journalists and other “members of civil society” were targets of a spyware campai...

Cybercrime gets a few punches on the nose

It’s not often that we get to share good news, so we wanted to grab this opportunity and showcase some progress made by law enforcement actions against cybercrime with you. Europol notified us about the take-down of two of the largest cybercrime forums in the world. With over 10 million users,...

Data brokers should stop trading health and location data, new bill proposes

Senators introduced a bill on Tuesday that would prohibit data brokers from selling or transferring location and health data. Data brokers have drawn attention this year by leaking several large databases, with the worst being the National Public Data leak. The data breach made international...

Patch now! New Chrome update for two critical vulnerabilities

Google has released an update for its Chrome browser which includes patches for two critical vulnerabilities. The update brings the Stable channel to versions 130.0.6723.91/.92 for Windows and Mac and 130.0.6723.91 for Linux. The easiest way to update Chrome is to allow it to update automatically...

Magniber ransomware targets home users

If you’ve been following any news about ransomware, you may be under the impression that ransomware groups are only after organizations rather than individual people, and for the most part that’s true. However, Magniber is one ransomware that does target home users. And its back, with full force,...

Apple fixes Siri vulnerabilities that could have allowed sensitive data theft from locked device. Update now!

Apple has released security updates for many of its products in order to patch several vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to steal sensitive information from a locked device. Included in the patches for Apple Watch, iOS, and iPadOS are four vulnerabilities in Siri. While your device is...

Microsoft Recall delayed after privacy and security concerns

Microsoft has announced it will postpone the broadly available preview of the heavily discussed Recall feature for Copilot+ PCs. Copilot+ PCs are personal computers that come equipped with several artificial intelligence AI features. The Recall feature tracks anything from web browsing to voice...

A week in security (April 22 – April 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ring agrees to pay $5.6 million after cameras were used to spy on customers TikTok comes one step closer to a US ban Google ad for Facebook redirects to scam "Substantial proportion" of Americans may have had health and personal data stolen in Change Healthcare...

FakeBat delivered via several active malvertising campaigns

February was a particularly busy month for search-based malvertising with the number of incidents we documented almost doubling. We saw similar payloads being dropped but also a few new ones that were particularly good at evading detection. One malware family we have been tracking on this blog is...

A week in security (February 26 – March 3)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: PikaBot malware on the rise: What organizations need to know Malicious meeting invite fix targets Mac users Pig butchering scams, how they work and how to avoid them Airbnb scam sends you to a fake Tripadvisor site, takes your money Facebook bug could have allowed...

Identity theft is number one threat for consumers, says report

The German Federal Office for Information Security BSI has published a report on The State of IT Security in Germany in 2023, and the number one threat for consumers is… identity theft. The thing is, you can protect your devices and your online privacy as much as possible, but what happens when...

Signal to shield user phone numbers by default

Chat app Signal will shield user’s phone numbers by default from now on. And, it will no longer be necessary to exchange phone numbers when people want to connect through the app. In November, we reported that Signal was testing usernames to eliminate the need to share your phone number. Signal h...

A week in security (January 15 – January 21)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Google failing to scrub abortion access in location history, study claims Google changes wording for Incognito browsing in Chrome CISA urges urgent patching of two actively exploited Citrix NetScaler vulnerabilities Cybersecurity spend to soar in 2024: How companie...

How IT teams can conduct a vulnerability assessment for third-party applications

Google Chrome, Adobe Acrobat Reader, TeamViewer, you name it—there’s no shortage of third-party apps that IT teams need to constantly check for vulnerabilities. But to get a better picture of the problem, lets bust out some napkin math. The average company uses about 200 applications overall...

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Clever malvertising attack uses Punycode to look like KeePass’s official website

Threat actors are known for impersonating popular brands in order to trick users. In a recent malvertising campaign, we observed a malicious Google ad for KeePass, the open-source password manager which was extremely deceiving. We previously reported on how brand impersonations are a common...

CISA catalog passes 1,000 known-to-be-exploited vulnerabilities. Celebration time, or is it?

On September 18, 2023, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA announced that its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV catalog has reached the milestone of covering more than 1,000 vulnerabilities since its launch in November 2021. This may seem like a lot, but with over 25,000 new...

Gen Z fears physical violence from being online more than anyone else, Malwarebytes finds

The "version history" of the internet was split by what we could do online--simple browsing across Web 1.0s static web pages, instant connection throughout Web 2.0s social platforms, and, into the future, potential new forms of ownership within Web 3.0s dreams of decentralization. But, as...

Meta is using your public Facebook and Instagram posts to train its AI

Post anything publicly on Facebook and Instagram? Meta has likely been using those posts to train its AI, according to the company's top policy executive. In an interview with Reuters, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said the company used the public posts to train the LLM large langua...

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,...

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...

DarkGate reloaded via malvertising and SEO poisoning campaigns

In July 2023, we observed a malvertising campaign that lured potential victims to a fraudulent site for a Windows IT management tool. Unlike previous similar attacks, the final payload was packaged differently and not immediately recognizable. The decoy file came as an MSI installer containing an...

A week in security (August 7 - August 13)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Zoom clarifies user consent requirement when training its AI Several hospitals still counting the cost of widespread ransomware attack Old exploit kits still kicking around in 2023 YouTube makes sweeping changes to tackle spam on Shorts videos Googles "browse...

Google’s “browse privately” is nothing more than a word play, lawyers say

Google will have to appear in court after a judge denied their request for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by users alleging the company illegally invaded the privacy of millions of people. Lawsuits against big tech over privacy issues are not much of a surprise these days, unfortunate as tha...

Server breach could be fatal blow for LetMeSpy

A mobile app designed to let people spy on others will shortly be going out of business after a server breach and mass deletion incident. The app, LetMeSpy, sits silently and invisibly on a phone and collects call logs, location data, and even text messages. This kind of program is commonly...

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...

How kids pay the price for ransomware attacks on education

Modern ransomware attacks are as much about stealing data and threatening to leak it as they are about encrypting data. Which means that when a school or hospital is attacked, it's often students' and patients' data that's leaked if the ransom demand isn't met. We have to wonder how greedy any...

Brave browser will prevent websites from port scanning visitors

If you use Brave browser, then youre shortly going to find you have a new string added to your security bow. Websites performing port scanning will now be automatically blocked beginning with version 1.54 of the browsing tool. Port scanning, I hear you cry? Yes indeed. You may well not have even...

5 unusual cybersecurity tips that actually work

So, youre on top of your software updates, you use a password manager, youve enabled two-factor authentication wherever you can, youve got BrowserGuard installed, and youre running Malwarebytes Premium. If you're doing all of that you're already winning at security. But you want more, because you...

US hospital forced to divert ambulances after cyberattack

The Idaho Falls Community Hospital fell victim to a cyberattack on Monday May 29, 2023. As a result, the hospital had to divert ambulances to other nearby hospitals and close some of its clinics. The hospital is keeping the public updated through its website and Facebook page. "Our commitment to...

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...

Google adds unwanted tracker detection to Find My Device network

Last week we reported that Google and Apple were looking for input on a draft specification to alert users in the event of suspected unwanted tracking. Apple and Google said other tracker makers like Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee have expressed interest in their draft. Now,...

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...