Azure AutoWarp brings automation headaches

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing service providing a wide range of features for businesses worldwide. It’s particularly popular for its virtual machines and IaaS infrastructure as a service. One useful Azure feature is Automation, which has been around for some years now. Management tasks can...

A week in security (February 28 – March 6)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Beware of malware offering “Warm greetings from Saudi Aramco” Update now! Cisco fixes several vulnerabilities HermeticWiper: A detailed analysis of the destructive malware that targeted Ukraine Tips to protect your data, security, and privacy from a hands-on expert...

Don’t fall for the “Donate to help children in Ukraine” scam

Earlier this week, we spotted a Microsoft sign-in phish that appeared to be taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis in order to scam people. The email warned of unauthorized log in attempts to the recipients account, and the location of those attempts was listed as "Russia/Moscow". We probably won...

Four key cybersecurity practices during geopolitical upheaval

Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine has altered the landscape of cybersecurity threats facing organizations both near and far from the physical threat of war. Disinformation is spreading and being actively fought. The old hacker group Anonymous promised “cyber war” against Russia. One ransomwa...

Yik Yak “cyberbullying”: What can be done?

In August 2021, Yik Yak, the once-popular anonymous social media platform on Android and iOS, made a comeback after shutting its doors in 2017. Six months after its return, its started to gain attention once more, as a result of cyberbullying—the main reason why it declined years ago. However, th...

Journalist won’t be indicted for hacking for viewing a state website’s HTML

A journalist incorrectly branded as a "hacker" by the governor of Missouri wont be prosecuted "for hacking". This was a quick and foreseen win for St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud after a prosecutor from Cole County dismissed Missouri Governor Mike Parsons criminal charges against him...

IRS abandons facial recognition plans for online services

If you dislike the use of facial recognition technology in relation to essential services, youre in luck. One such proposition has been removed. Last year, the IRS announced it would be using facial recognition selfies to confirm identity. If you wanted the convenience of making payments online,...

Actor’s verified Twitter profile hijacked to spam NFT giveaways

When we refer to hijacked verified profiles on Twitter, it’s most commonly some sort of Elon Musk themed scam. The hijackers compromise the account, switch the picture to Elon, and then start spamming cryptocurrency links. Alternatively, they may keep the account as it is and spam images claiming...

Cyberinsurance companies don’t want to pay out for “acts of war”

Due to the evolving and growing impact of cybersecurity incidents there are some questions starting to arise about the way that insurance companies deal with the costs that are the results of such incidents. Cyber insurance is a form of cover designed to protect your business from threats in the...

Dark Souls servers taken offline over hacking fears

There’s been trouble brewing over the weekend for players of the smash-hit Dark Souls series. PvP player vs player servers were temporarily shut down by the developers after a hack. Dark Souls says that PvP servers for console versions PlayStation, Xbox were not affected, and that it is a...

Cybercriminals’ friend VPNLab.net shut down by law enforcement

Europol has announced that law enforcement has seized or disrupted the 15 servers that hosted VPNLab.net’s service, rendering it no longer available. Led by the Central Criminal Office of the Hannover Police Department in Germany, the coordinated operation took place in Germany itself, the...

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...

Sophisticated phishing scheme spent years robbing authors of their unpublished work

Three years ago on Quora, someone asked what writers do to keep their manuscripts from being stolen. One of the top answers reads as follows: You’re joking, right? It’s hard enough to get people to read your novel once it’s out on Amazon, much less reading it before it’s finished…unless you’re...

Careful! Uber flaw allows anyone to send an email from uber.com

On New Years Eve, Seif Elsallamy @0x21SAFE on Twitter, a bug bounty hunter and security researcher, pointed out a phish-worthy security flaw he found on Uber’s email system. The flaw allowed anyone to send emails on behalf of Uber, meaning they would end with "@uber.com", just like the one below:...

Purple Fox rootkit now bundled with Telegram installer

The Purple Fox rootkit is being spread as an installer for the popular Telegram instant messaging app for Windows, according to researchers. Its not clear how the installer in this case was distributed, although it seems like at least some were delivered via email. Common distribution methods for...

Police forces pipe 225 million pwned passwords into ‘Have I Been Pwned?’

On his blog, Troy Hunt has announced a major milestone in the ‘Have I Been Pwned?’ project, thanks to the contributions of two of the worlds foremost law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the NCA the UK equivalent of the FBI, the National Crime Agency. This enormous injection of used passwords ha...

Have you downloaded that Android malware from the Play Store lately?

This post has been updated to include the Malwarebytes detection for these Android apps. Security researchers have discovered banking Trojan apps on the Google Play Store, and say they have been downloaded by more than 300,000 Android users. As you may know, banking Trojans are kitted for stealin...

Hackers all over the world are targeting Tasmania’s emergency services

Emergency services—under which the police, fire, and emergency medical services departments fall—is an infrastructure vital to any country or state. But when those services come under threat from either physical or cyber entities, it’s as good as putting the lives of citizens at risk as well...

Inside Apple: How Apple’s attitude impacts security

Last week saw the fourth occurrence of the Objective by the Sea OBTS security conference, which is the only security conference to focus exclusively on Apples ecosystem. As such, it draws many of the top minds in the field. This year, those minds, having been starved of a good security conference...

Surviving college distance learning during the pandemic: a cybersecurity guide

Social distancing, the wearing of face masks, practicing hand hygiene, and disinfecting often-touched surfaces have become human necessities during the pandemic era. For schools, theyve also had to adapt quickly to incorporate distance learning methods that let students continue their studies. Bu...

New Android P includes several security improvements

According to the Android developer Program Overview, the next major version of Android, Android 9.0 or P, is set to arrive soon. Their plans show a final release within the next three months Q3 2018. The end of the Android P beta program is approaching, with the first release candidate built and...

A week in security (February 5 – February 11)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we featured a new Flash Player zero-day that has been found in recent targeted attacks. And we talked about a new trick to cripple browsers that came out of the hat of tech support scammers. We also covered several methods of stealing cryptocurrencies, including on...

New Mac cryptominer has 23 older variants

On February 1, a new Mac cryptominer was discovered being distributed via a hack of the MacUpdate website. Since then, we've been doing some digging and found that this isolated incident was just the tip of the iceberg. The malware delivered by the MacUpdate hack appears to be the culmination of...

Tech support scammers find new way to jam Google Chrome (updated)

Update 1 2018-02-07: This issue with Google Chrome was reported here and merged here. Update 2 2018-02-07: Firefox and Brave seem to be affected by this bug as well both vendors were informed. During the past quarter we have noted an increase in fake browser alerts pushing tech support scams. Mos...

How cryptocurrency mining works: Bitcoin vs. Monero

Ever wondered why websites that are mining in the background don’t mine for the immensely hot Bitcoin, but for Monero instead? We can explain that. As there are different types of cryptocurrencies, there are also different types of mining. After providing you with some background information abou...

Explained: security certificates

As a result of my PowerShell series 1,2,3, where I used the handling of certificates as an example, mainly because I wanted a method to keep track easier of which certificates were being added by malware, I've have received some questions about how security certificates work and how they stopped...

Fireball arrests made

Following some arrests in China, we may see a decrease in the amount of adware and adfraud hailing from the Rafotech labs. According to some reports 250 million machines may have been infected with one variant or another of Rafotechs’ products. We have shared some information about the potential...

Update your iPhone, iPad and Mac to fix Apple security holes

Apple has shipped a hefty round of July security patches, headlined by iOS/iPadOS 26.6, macOS Tahoe 26.6, and Safari 26.6, with dozens of vulnerabilities squashed across kernel, WebKit, media frameworks, and core apps. These updates are primarily about improving security rather than adding new...

Call of Duty Mobile scam uses fake free points to steal player accounts

Call of Duty Mobile players should watch out for a phishing campaign disguised as a free Call of Duty Points giveaway. Victims are asked to log in with their email address and password to claim free Call of Duty Points CP, the game's premium currency. They're then redirected to a second page aski...

The Odyssey piracy scams appear within hours of the movie’s release

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is one of the biggest movie releases of the year and scammers wasted no time taking advantage of it. Within hours of the film's release, we found scams targeting people looking for pirated copies. Some used fake browser warnings on piracy sites, while others...

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...

Malware steals Chrome session cookies to take over your accounts

An email attachment leads to the installation of a malicious Chrome extension. Researchers say it is part of a Windows backdoor delivered via a phishing email. The malware abuses Chrome Native Messaging to move control from the browser into the host system. Its most notable trick isn't the phishi...

Watch out for renewal scams pretending to be Malwarebytes

Fake subscription renewal notices are doing the rounds again. Some of these scams impersonate Malwarebytes, and we've also seen them reach our customers. You're more likely to trust the message if you're already a customer of the company mentioned in the email. That's what the scammers are counti...

Deepfake porn sites are going offline (re-air) (Lock and Code S07E12)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … If you weren't taking deepfakes seriously before, it's too late now to ignore them. According to new research from Malwarebytes, one in three people who use AI every day said it's okay to generate pornography of people without their consent. Nearly 10 year...

Stolen iPhones could soon be worth a lot less to thieves

The UK’s Metropolitan Police has reached an agreement with Apple designed to make stolen iPhones harder to resell and less attractive to thieves. The approach combines stronger technical protections with direct data sharing between Apple and law enforcement. In 2023, about 1.4 million mobile phon...

Free Spotify Premium hacks on social media are spreading infostealers

Short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels have become the latest way cybercriminals spread malware. We've already seen attackers move away from traditional phishing emails and toward tactics that trick people into installing malware themselves. Now they're being lured with slick...

We found this fake-invoice campaign while scammers were still building it

A new batch of fake payment invoices is being staged right now, and we caught the campaign while it was still being put together. The emails impersonate PayPal, Amazon, and Geek Squad, and others, and they all share one goal: to scare you into calling a phone number where a fake "support agent" i...

23andMe exposed genetic information of millions, lawsuit says

California has sued the former shell of DNA testing company 23andMe over alleged security failures and misleading statements surrounding its 2023 data breach. On May 27, 2026, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court against Chrome Holding Co., the company now handlin...

Carnival confirms data breach impacting nearly 6 million

Carnival Corporation, parent of Carnival Cruise Line, is sending out fresh “Notice of Cybersecurity Event” letters dated May 27, 2026. If you feel like you've read that sentence before, you're not imagining things. Over the last decade, the world’s largest cruise operator has accumulated a worryi...

Catch spyware in the act with Windows Webcam Monitoring

You’re working hard late at night, replying to emails and planning the week ahead. Then suddenly, a PDF file requests access to your camera. Why would a PDF need camera access? Cybercriminals often disguise spyware inside seemingly harmless files and programs. An unexpected request for access to...

Researchers left AI agents alone in a virtual town and watched it all unravel

Tech leaders have spent the past year telling everyone that AI agents are about to run financial systems, file your tax returns, and quietly buy your groceries. Just leave them alone, the rhetoric goes; they'll handle it. But a New York startup left ten of them alone in a virtual town for two...

Stolen Canvas data was “returned” after hacker agreement, Instructure says

The Instructure/Canvas data breach that has dominated cybersecurity coverage recently has reached a new stage. Millions of students had personal data stolen, with extortion group ShinyHunters claiming credit for the data breach and applying extra pressure for their ransom demands by bothering...

Mythos: An AI tool too powerful for public release

Anthropic’s most capable model to date, Claude Mythos Preview aka Mythos, has been described as a “step change” in AI performance, especially on cybersecurity tasks. Anthropic tried to keep Mythos a secret until a few weeks ago, when a data leak revealed the existence of what the company said was...

Fake YouTube copyright notices can steal your Google login

A convincing phishing campaign is going after YouTube creators, and if it works, attackers don't just steal your Google login. They can take over your entire Google account, including Gmail, your files, and payments, then hijack your YouTube channel and use your audience to run scams. The lure is...

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN receives full third-party audit

For the careful VPN customer today, so much depends upon a privacy promise, made, too often, by a company without proof. No-logs policies, modern encryption algorithms, a refusal to store sensitive customer information, and full ownership of servers are just some of the features that contribute t...

Researchers found font-rendering trick to hide malicious commands

Researchers have published a proof-of-concept PoC that uses custom fonts to fool many popular Artificial Intelligence AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Leo, Grok, Perplexity, Sigma, Dia, Fellou, and Genspark. Imagine a book where the visible text is harmless, but hidden...

A week in security (March 9 – March 15)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Watch out for fake Malwarebytes renewal notices in your calendar Google patches two Chrome zero-days under active attack. Update now Attackers impersonate Temu in ClickFix $Temu airdrop scam Apple patches Coruna exploit kit flaws for older iOS versions This Android...

Watch out for AT&T rewards phishing text that wants your personal details

A coworker shared this suspicious SMS where AT&T supposedly warns the recipient that their reward points are about to expire. Phishing attacks are growing increasingly sophisticated, likely with help from AI. They're getting better at mimicking major brands—not just in look, but in behavior...

Watch out for Walmart gift card scams

You’ve probably seen it before—a bright, urgent message claiming you’ve qualified for a $750 or $1000 Walmart gift card. All you have to do is answer a few questions. It looks harmless enough. But once you click, you find yourself in a maze of surveys, redirects, and "partner offers"—without ever...

Troops and veterans’ personal information leaked in CPAP Medical data breach

In December 2024, CPAP Medical Supplies and Services Inc. CPAP, a Jacksonville—a Florida-based provider of sleep therapy services and CPAP machines—experienced a cybersecurity incident that compromised the personal data of over 90,000 patients. Since CPAP Medical specializes in tailored sleep apn...