Tax refund phish logs keystrokes to swipe personal details

Theres been some smart phishing campaigns running over the last few weeks, and this one is particularly sneaky. Bleeping Computer reports that a phishing page is targeting Greek taxpayers with a tax refund scam. The added sting in the tail comes in the form of an embedded keylogger which grabs...

[update] American Airlines suffers data breach after phishing incident

Major airline American Airlines has fallen victim to a data breach after a threat actor got access to the email accounts of several employees via a phishing attack. According to a published notice of a security incident, the data breach was discovered in July 2022. How it happened American Airlin...

The privacy concerns of tying SIM cards to real identities

The registration of SIM cards tied to a verified identity is back in the news, off the back of large-scale phone fraud. In what some may call a knee-jerk response to a problem, there are calls to revive a legal bill and make it law. Whats happening, and what are the potential ramifications? Hitti...

Update now! QNAP warns users DeadBolt is exploiting Photo Station vulnerability

QNAP Quality Network Appliance Provider has warned users to update Photo Station to the latest available version. The warning comes after QNAP detected that cybercriminals known as DeadBolt have been exploiting a Photo Station vulnerability in order to encrypt QNAP NAS systems that are directly...

Firefox stops advertisers tracking you as you browse, calls itself the most “private and secure major browser”

Cookies are in the news as Mozilla rolls out significant privacy changes for Firefox. The idea is to dramatically lessen the risk of privacy-invading tracking across websites without your knowledge. Tracking cookies have been a hot topic in recent months, as advertisers try switching to other...

Instagram verification services: What are the dangers?

Instagram, like other social platforms, has a verification system for high profile accounts. A verified badge means Instagram has confirmed that the account is the authentic presence of a public figure, celebrity or brand. Have you ever wanted to get your own account verified? We noticed a large...

How iPhones can run malware even when they’re off

Most people think that turning off their iPhone - or letting the battery die - means that the phone is, well, off. The thing is, this isnt quite true. In reality, most of the phones functionality has ended, but there are components that mindlessly continue a zombie-like existence, for the most pa...

Beware Twitter Messages claiming “Your blue badge Twitter account has been reviewed as spam”

Twitter verification is a two-edged sword. According to Twitter, its supposed to let people know "that an account of public interest is authentic." Thats great, so long as the account is authentic, but what if, one day, it suddenly isnt? An attacker that can wrestle a verified account from its...

Google Play’s Data safety section empowers Android users to make informed app choices

Google has launched its new "nutrition labels" for apps, a feature it promised in the spring of 2021. This release came days after the Chrome team released badges for the Chrome Web Store for browser extensions. The company said in a blog post that its rolling out the labels—which it calls the...

It’s legal to scrape public data—US appeals court

Web scraping—the automated extraction of data from websites—has been around for a long time. Simultaneously cursed and praised, with nobody being able to quite land the decisive blow about whether it should be allowed, one way or another. This may have changed, thanks to a recent US appeals court...

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...

Zloader, another botnet, bites the dust

Microsoft has announced that its Digital Crimes Unit DCU has taken legal and technical action to disrupt a malicious botnet called Zloader. Zloader or Zbot are common names used to refer to any malware related to the ZeuS family. There are a lot of those because the ZeuS banking Trojan source cod...

Beware Ukraine-themed fundraising scams

Unfortunately scammers continue to focus on the invasion of Ukraine to make money. A flurry of bogus domains and scam techniques are spreading their wings. They appear to focus on donation fakeouts but there’s a few other nasty surprises lying in wait too. The lowest of the low There are few lowe...

Looking over your shoulder: when small mistakes have big consequences

People up to no good get themselves caught in an endless number of ways. This has always been the case in the real world, and continues to be true online. No matter how talented, how daring the schemes, greed and the desire for fame often win out. This has disastrous consequences for those caught...

Extortion scheme impersonates government officials, law enforcement

The FBI issued a public warning this week about a fraud scheme wherein scammers impersonate government officials and law enforcement personnel. According to the PSA, the scammers spoof legitimate numbers and names and use fake credentials of well-known members of the government and law enforcemen...

Data breaches leave customers very shaky, report says

Data breaches are one of the most reported cyberattacks against businesses—regardless of size and industry. And while this has highlighted cybersecurity gaps on so many fronts, some companies are still not prioritizing them as they should. Some have scrambled to be compliant but then find...

TrickBot takes down server infrastructure after months of inactivity

The king of tricks is dead. Long live the new king. Or will it make a comeback? While we already assumed TrickBot was dead in the water, the shutdown of the server infrastructure on February 24, 2022, did not go unnoticed. Is this really the end of one of the most active botnets in the last decad...

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...

Securitas breached, 3TB of airport employee records exposed

An unsecured AWS server, found open to the public Internet, is the root cause of a huge compromise of data of airport employees in Colombia and Peru. This server, according to a report, belongs to Securitas, a Stockholm-based multinational company that provides security services like security...

Ransomware gangs are recruiting breached individuals to persuade companies to pay up

Youve heard about ransomware, where attackers lock up your files and demand a payment for the decryption key. You may also have heard about ransomware attackers not only locking up your files, but also threatening to release the stolen data in an attempt to get you to pay up. What you may not hav...

Browsers on iOS, iPadOS and Mac leak your browsing activity and personal identifiers

Researchers at FingerprintJS, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in online fraud prevention, have published a software bug introduced in Safari 15’s implementation of the IndexedDB API that lets any website track your internet activity and may even reveal your identity. They found that in Safa...

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...

Night Sky: the new corporate ransomware demanding a sky high ransom

Theres a new ransomware in town—isnt there always?—and its, unsurprisingly, after corporation-sized businesses. Its called Night Sky, and it was first spotted and revealed by MalwareHunterTeam, a group on Twitter who hunts malware online, on the first day of 2022. First day of the year, and a new...

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...

A week in security (Dec 20 – 26)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: When a deepfake “empire” continues to grow Everything you always wanted to know about NFTs but were too afraid to ask: Lock and Code S02E24 Police forces pipe 225 million pwned passwords into ‘Have I Been Pwned?’ Logistics giant warns of scams following ransomware...

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...

The one reason your iPhone needs a VPN

For years, Apple has marketed its iPhone as the more secure, more private option when compared to other smart phones, which do not, by default, include an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, warn users repeatedly about app location requests, or provide a privacy-forward Single Sign-On feature. Bu...

These convincing copyright notices are designed to steal Google logins

A new scam is targeting people who publish Chrome extensions. The scam arrives as an official-looking "copyright removal request" claiming your extension is about to be removed from the Chrome Web Store and that you have 48 hours to appeal. It even looks personalized. After you enter your...

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...

Kali365 phishing kit bypasses MFA and steals Microsoft logins

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI publishes a dedicated public service announcement about a new phishing kit, it’s worth paying attention to. The agency is now warning about “Kali365,” a phishing‑as‑a‑service PhaaS platform that helps even low‑skilled attackers hijack Microsoft 365...

Company bragged phone mics could listen to conversations. They couldn’t.

A media company and two of its marketing partners have been fined for selling a service which, they said, listened in to people's conversations through their phones. Actually they did nothing of the sort. Most people have worried at some point that their phone has been listening to them through t...

Fake malware-signing service Fox Tempest dismantled by Microsoft

Microsoft says it dismantled a malware-signing-as-a-service MSaaS called Fox Tempest, which helped cybercriminals make malware appear legitimate. The service let customers submit malicious files to be digitally signed with short-lived Microsoft-issued certificates, making the malware look...

ShinyHunters escalates Canvas attacks with school login defacements

Days after confirming a major data breach, Instructure is now facing a second blow. Earlier this week, Instructure confirmed a major data breach affecting its cloud‑hosted Canvas environment, with the ShinyHunters group claiming it stole hundreds of millions of records tied to thousands of school...

3 easy-to-miss cybersecurity risks for small businesses

There’s a lot to security that isn’t necessarily “cyber.” It’s not all hackers or complex network attacks. Alongside traditional cyberattacks that deploy malware or exploit known software vulnerabilities, there are also less technical—yet equally devastating—forms of theft. This doesn’t mean that...

Windows File Shredder: When deleting a file isn’t enough

Most of us think deleting a file means it’s gone for good. But “delete” on a Windows device often just means “out of sight,” not necessarily “out of reach.” That’s where File Shredder, a new feature within Malwarebytes Tools for Windows, comes in. File Shredder lets you securely delete files from...

Fake Zoom and Google Meet scams install Teramind: A technical deep dive

UPDATE February 27, 2026 : We have added more clarity around the abuse of legitimate commercial products, and of Teramind's stealth mode. Important note: Teramind, the software vendor referenced in this article, has stated they are not affiliated with the threat actors described, did not deploy t...

Reddit, porn sites fined by UK regulators over children’s safety and privacy

The UK’s online safety and privacy regulators are targeting companies that violate new age verification laws at both ends : Porn sites that did not keep children out, and mainstream platforms that profited from children coming in. On February 23, media regulator Ofcom fined porn operators that...

Scam Guard for desktop: A second set of eyes for suspicious moments

Scams aren’t so obvious anymore. They're well-written, have working grammar, and can lead victims to very convincing branded webpages. Scammers increasingly use AI tools to clone sites and create highly sophisticated scams at scale, so don't expect to rely on spotting obvious typos anymore. That’...

February 2026 Patch Tuesday includes six actively exploited zero-days

Microsoft releases important security updates on the second Tuesday of every month, known as “Patch Tuesday.” This month’s update patches fix 59 Microsoft CVE’s including six zero-days. Let’s have a quick look at these six actively exploited zero-days. Windows Shell Security Feature Bypass...

AT&T breach data resurfaces with new risks for customers

When data resurfaces, it never comes back weaker. A newly shared dataset tied to AT&T shows just how much more dangerous an “old” breach can become once criminals have enough of the right details to work with. The dataset, privately circulated since February 2, 2026, is described as AT&T customer...

Lego’s Smart Bricks explained: what they do, and what they don’t

Lego just made what it claims is its most important product release since it introduced minifigures in 1978. No, it's not yet another brand franchise. It's a computer in a brick. Called the Smart Brick , it's part of a broader system called Smart Play that Lego hopes will revolutionize your child...

Pig butchering is the next “humanitarian global crisis” (Lock and Code S06E25)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … This is the story of the world's worst scam and how it is being used to fuel entire underground economies that have the power to rival nation-states across the globe. This is the story of "pig butchering." "Pig butchering" is a violent term that is used to...

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...

Thousands of online stores at risk as SessionReaper attacks spread

Early September, a security researcher uncovered a new vulnerability in Magento, an open-source e-commerce platform used by thousands of online retailers, and its commercial counterpart Adobe Commerce. It sounds like something straight out of a horror movie: SessionReaper. Behind the cinematic na...

Scammers hijack websites of Bank of America, Netflix, Microsoft, and more to insert fake phone number

The examples in this post are actual fraud attempts found by Malwarebytes Senior Director of Research, Jérôme Segura. Cybercriminals frequently use fake search engine listings to take advantage of our trust in popular brands, and then scam us. It often starts, as with so many attacks, with a...

Your Meta AI chats might be public, and it’s not a bug

Conversations that people are having with the Meta AI app are being exposed publicly, often without the users realizing it, revealing a variety of medical, legal, and private matters. The standalone app and the company's integrations with artificial intelligence AI across its platforms—Facebook,...

Amazon disables privacy option, will send your Echo voice recordings to the cloud

Amazon has announced its Echo devices will no longer have the option to store and process requests on the device itself, meaning your voice recordings will now be sent to the cloud for processing. In an email sent to customers, Amazon explained that the feature "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" will...

How ads weirdly know your screen brightness, headphone jack use, and location, with Tim Shott (Lock and Code S06E05)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … Something's not right in the world of location data. In January, a location data broker named Gravy Analytics was hacked, with the alleged cybercriminal behind the attack posting an enormous amount of data online as proof. Though relatively unknown to most...

These are the 10 worst PIN codes

Australian news outlet ABC NEWS analyzed a data set of 29 million 4-digit PIN numbers that people actually used to secure their devices, ATM withdrawals, building access, and more. What the outlet discovered is both expected and disappointing: Too many people use insecure PIN codes to protect...

Three privacy rules for 2025 (Lock and Code S06E02)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… It’s Data Privacy Week right now, and that means, for the most part, that you’re going to see a lot of well-intentioned but clumsy information online about how to protect your data privacy. You’ll see articles about iPhone settings. You’ll hear acronyms for...