New tool allows you to opt out of Facebook's targeted advertising

After Meta Facebook and Instagram switched the legal basis for targeting advertising from automatic consent to opt-out, privacy watchdog noyb has built a tool for users to opt out of targeted advertising and various other claims made by Meta in an easy and legally sound way. After losing several...

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...

LockBit ransomware demands $2 million for Pierce Transit data

The Pierce County Public Transportation Benefit Area Corporation Pierce Transit has fallen victim to a cyberattack using LockBit ransomware. Pierce Transit is a public transit operator in Washington state. The attack began on February 14, 2023, and required Pierce Transit to implement temporary...

TikTok probed over child privacy practices

The privacy protection authorities for Canada, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta have announced they will start an investigation into TikTok's privacy practices, especially in relation to its younger users. The investigation will include whether the company obtained valid and meaningful conse...

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...

Encrypted messaging service eavesdropped on by police, users arrested

After eavesdropping on yet another encrypted messaging service for five months, law enforcement agencies decided to shut down the service that was popular among members of organized crime groups. The service called Exclu claims to use the "most secure encryption protocols", as well as end-to-end...

TikTok CEO told to "step up efforts to comply" with digital laws

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, the EU's digital policy chief, "explicitly conveyed" to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew that the company must "step up efforts to comply" with the European Union's rules on copyright, data protection, and the Digital Services Act DSA--an EU regulation setting out "an...

Mailchimp breach feels like deja vu

A threat actor successfully used compromised employee credentials to gain access to 133 accounts on Mailchimp, the mainstream Intuit-owned email marketing platform, in a security incident that recently came to light. "On January 11, the Mailchimp Security team identified an unauthorized actor...

Adult popunder campaign used in mainstream ad fraud scheme

This blog post was authored by Jerome Segura Online advertising is a multi billion dollar industry with projected spending to reach over 600 billion U.S. dollars for 2022. It's not surprising that criminals are trying their hardest to abuse this ecosystem in any way that they can. One of the...

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...

Police warn of fake law enforcement arrest warrant calls

Brownsville Police Department is warning about scammers impersonating law enforcement in order to extract money from potential victims. The scam involves pressure from an immediate threat, several ways to extract yourself from this non-existent claim of wrongdoing, and multiple levels of...

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...

Court rules webcam monitoring of remote employee was an invasion of privacy

A Dutch court has ruled that the decision to fire a remote employee because he refused to keep his webcam on during working hours was unjustified. The employee worked remotely for a Florida-based software development company with a Dutch office. The court ruled that the request to keep the webcam...

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?...

Sextortionists used mobile malware to steal nude videos, contact lists from victims

In an international police operation supported by Interpol, law enforcement agencies have uncovered and dismantled an international sextortion ring that managed to extract at least US$ 47,000 from victims. Sextortion is a form of cybercrime in which the victim is blackmailed by threatening to mak...

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...

Phishers use verified status as bait for Instagram users

Another Instagram phish is doing the rounds, and will appeal to a wide variety of platform users. Bleeping Computer reports that verified status is once again being dangled as bait. The "importance" of being verified Being verified gives the impression of status, or importance, on social media...

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,...

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...

Ring shares data with police without consent (but it’s in good faith), says Amazon

Ring, the Amazon-owned company behind the popular smart doorbells, has admitted to giving doorbell data to law enforcement willy-nilly. All they have to do is fill out a form called the Amazon Law Enforcement Request Tracker—no need to ask for the data owners consent, give a warrant or court orde...

Low-income consumers preyed on by fake ISP during pandemic, FCC says

The FCC Federal Communications Commission has proposed a fine of $220,210 against Kyle Traxler of Ohio for allegedly establishing the bogus internet provider, Cleo Communications, to scam low-income consumers. The victims believed they were receiving government-approved discounts on internet...

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 ...

ZuoRAT is a sophisticated malware that mainly targets SOHO routers

Researchers have analysed a campaign leveraging infected SOHO routers to target predominantly North American and European networks of interest. The so-called ZuoRAT campaign, which very likely started in 2020, is so sophisticated that the researchers suspect that there is a state sponsored threat...

Dial 311 for… cybersecurity emergencies?

Members of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of CISA Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have proposed an emergency cybersecurity call line for small and medium-sized businesses SMBs. Should the proposition be approved, SMBs would be able to call 311 in the event of a cybersecurit...

7-Zip gets Mark of the Web feature, increases protection for users

One of the most popular zip programs around, 7-Zip, now offers support for "Mark of the Web" MOTW, which gives users better protection from malicious files. This is good news. But what does that actually mean? In the bad old days, opening up a downloaded document could be a fraught exercise...

Internet Safety Month: 7 tips for staying safe online while on vacation

Going on vacation has never been more talked about and anticipated. I mean—for many of us, its been a while. But before you get lost in dreamy thoughts of sun, sea, and sand, you might want to set aside some time to plan on how to keep your devices, and your data, safe while you are relaxing Your...

Record breaking HTTPS DDoS attack

Last week, Cloudflare blocked the largest HTTPS DDoS attack on record. The attack amassed some 26 million requests per second rps. The previous record for a HTTPS DDoS attack was 15.3 million rps. The attack targeted an unnamed Cloudflare customer and originated mostly from Cloud Service Provider...

Internet Safety Month: Parental controls—what they can and can’t do for you

Parental controls can be useful to limit the risks your children run into online, but you should know up front that they cannot eliminate every risk out there. Parents and adults everywhere are understandably having a hard time keeping up with the favored social networks of children and...

Runescape phish claims your email has been changed

A Runescape-themed missive landed in our email inbox today, claiming action is required to secure our account. The malicious email and the scam behind it are perfect examples of one of the more reliable tactics in the world of phishing—fooling a victim into thinking they need to take some action ...

Intuit phish says “we have put a temporary hold on your account”

Intuit released a warning about a phishing email being sent to its customers. The phishing emails tell recipients that their account has been put on hold, and try to trick users into “validating their account” to release it again. Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that...

Why you should act like your CEO’s password is “qwerty”

A poor password at the highest levels of an organisation can cost a company millions in losses. Recent findings show that half of IT leaders store passwords in shared documents. On top of that, it seems that folks at executive level are not picking good passwords either. Researchers from NordPass...

Virtual credit cards coming to Chrome: What you need to know

When youre buying things online, reducing the exposure of payment details during transactions is one way to help reduce the risk of data theft. If you can hide this payment data and switch it out for something else entirely, even better. Google is proposing to do just that for customers in the US...

Clearview AI banned from selling facial recognition data in the US

Clearview AI, a facial recognition software and surveillance company, is permanently banned from selling its faceprint database within the United States. The company also cannot sell its database to state and law enforcement entities in Illinois for five years. This is a historic win for the...

Cyberattacks on SATCOM networks attributed to Russian threat actors

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have updated their joint cybersecurity advisory, Strengthening Cybersecurity of SATCOM Network Providers and Customers, originally released March 17, 2022, with US government attribution to Russian...

8 security tips for small businesses

Small businesses and startups are known to face some extra challenges when it comes to cybersecurity. Because they don’t have the size or budget to have a fully-fledged dedicated security team, it often comes down to a smaller staff that doesn’t have the time to do everything that is recommended ...

State-backed hacking group from China is targeting the Russian military

In an unexpected turn of events, research has surfaced about a Chinese APT advanced persistent threat group targeting the Russian military in recent cyberattacks. Tracked as Bronze President, Mustang Panda, RedDelta, and TA416, the group has focused mainly on Southeast Asian targets—and more...

US healthcare billing services group hacked, affecting at least half a million individuals

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Adaptive Health Integrations AHI, a healthcare software and billing services firm in North Dakota, suffered a data breach that affected more than half a million individuals. According to the firm, the breach occurred in mid-October last...

Hackers fool major tech companies into handing over data of women and minors to abuse

Some major tech companies have unwittingly opened harassment and exploitation opportunities to the women and children who they have pledged to protect. This happened because they provided information in response to emergency data requests from legitimate law enforcement accounts that hackers had...

A week in security (April 18 – 24)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Why you shouldn’t automate your VirusTotal uploads North Korean Lazarus APT group targets blockchain tech companies Watch out for Ukraine donation scammers in Twitter replies Beware tragic “my daughter died…” Facebook posts offering free PS5s US warns of APT groups...

US warns of APT groups that can “gain full system access” to some industrial control systems

An "exceptionally rare and dangerous" advanced persistent threat APT malware kit, containing custom-made tools designed to target some of North America’s industrial control systems ICS and supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA devices, appears to have been caught before it could be let...

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...

A week in security (March 14 – 20)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Beware of this bogus and phishy “Instagram Support” email Meet Exotic Lily, access broker for ransomware and other malware peddlers Double header: IsaacWiper and CaddyWiper How to protect RDP Online Safety Bill’s provisions for “legal but harmful” content described...