Beware fake Facebook emails saying "your page has been disabled"

Facebook users need to be on their guard for bogus emails claiming to be from Facebook, that tell users their account has been disabled. The emails make use of the classic "apply some pressure" tactics so beloved of scammers everywhere. A missive that makes you shrug wont get you clicking bogus...

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...

Google sponsored ads malvertising targets password manager

We have recently written about malvertising campaigns that leverage Google paid advertisements to try and trick people into downloading malware instead of the software they were looking for. This malware then stole login credentials from the affected system. Now, our researchers found that the...

3 ways Malwarebytes helps you browse securely and privately online

Malicious links. Third-party ad trackers. Information-gobbling data brokers. Lets face it, the Internet is kind of like the Wild West when it comes to threats to our privacy and security. And unfortunately, it takes a little more than a cowboy hat and a pistol to defend yourself out there. Thats...

VASTFLUX ad fraud massively affected millions of iOS devices, dismantled

Researchers have successfully dismantled a massive ad fraud campaign they stumbled upon by accident. The Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team dubbed the campaign VASTFLUX, a portmanteau of "fast flux"--an evasion technique involving the constant changing of IP addresses behind a single...

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...

5 must-haves for K-12 cybersecurity

Over the years, cyberattacks on K-12 schools and districts have steadily increased, and in 2022 that trend only continued. In the first half of 2022 alone, the education sector saw an average of almost 2,000 attacks every week--a 114% increase compared to two years ago. The tight budgets of many...

2023 prediction: Security workforce shortage will lead to nationally significant cyberattack

If 2022 was any indication, businesses are about to face an unprecedented volume, frequency, and sophistication of cyberthreats in 2023. Global cyberattacks have increased by 483 percent over the last two years, and at the current rate of growth, damage from such attacks will amount to $10.5...

Identity thieves bypass security questions to access Experian credit reports

After a tip from a Telegram user who frequented identity theft channels, Brian Krebs tested and confirmed that anyone who knew your name, address, social security number SSN, and birthday could view your full credit report at Experian. Skipping security questions The method to get access did not...

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...

FBI, CISA warn of disinformation ahead of midterms

In less than four weeks, the balance of power in the US House of Representatives and Senate will be up for grabs, along with a host of gubernatorial seats, and positions at the state and municipal levels. With everyone preparing to cast their ballots, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and...

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...

Meta accuses apps of stealing WhatsApp accounts

Meta is attempting to clamp down on rogue WhatsApp-styled applications which originate from China. Bleeping Computer reports that no fewer than one million WhatsApp accounts have been compromised, allegedly as a result of using these apps which are claimed to bundle malware. Dubious apps The apps...

Admin from hell facing 10 years for sabotaging ex-employer's network

The perils of the insider threats are often talked about in abstract terms, probably because most organisations want to keep a lid on internally-based bad actors. Every so often, concrete details emerge to highlight what a thoroughly rotten day a rogue employee can inflict on everybody else thoug...

Ransomware review: September 2022

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom. This article is also availab...

Spyware disguises itself as Zoom downloads

Zoom video call software continues to be a staple in work environments. Despite a slow, post-lockdown easing back to the "old normal," many businesses still have remote workers, or people working in different geographies. It's no surprise then to see criminals continuing to abuse Zoom's popularit...

TikTok faces $28m fine for failing to protect children's privacy

TikTok is no stranger to controversy where data usage is concerned. Back in 2021, the social media dance extravaganza platform agreed to pay $92m to settle dozens of lawsuits alleging harvesting of personal data. There has also been concern with regard to whether or not settings were enough to ke...

5 things to teach your kids about social media

With children now back at school, its time to think about social media, and their use of it. Are they already firing out tweets, chatting in Discord channels, or even just looking to set up a Tik-Tok account? Now is the time to consider giving your kids some security and privacy tips for all thei...

Cyber threat hunting for SMBs: How MDR can help

When you hear the words "cyber threat hunting", you just may picture an elite team of security professionals scouring your systems for malware. Sounds like something only huge businesses or nation states would need to do, right? Not quite. Threat hunting is just as essential for...

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?...

YouTube transparency report shows battle against misinformation

Statistics for YouTube community guidelines enforcement are now available for the period April to June 2022, via Googles Transparency Report. YouTube channels are terminated if they accrue three community guideline strikes in 90 days, have a case of severe abuse predatory behaviour, for example, ...

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...

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...

Malwarebytes receives highest rankings in recent third-party tests

Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection continues to receive outstanding results in third-party testing. Our recent participation in two highly-regarded industry evaluations, namely MRG-Effitas and Info-Techs Data Quadrant Report, reflects our belief that continual testing and unbiased validation are...

Twilio data breach turns out to be more elaborate than suspected

Earlier this month, messaging service Twilio got compromised by a sophisticated social engineering attack. After deploying phishing attacks against company employees, hackers were able to access user data, but now it seems that the impact of the hack was more elaborate than originally assumed. In...

Binance chief says a “sophisticated hacking team” turned him into a deepfake hologram

Deepfakes are back, and causing major problems for people involved in financial circles. Scammers have been targeting people in the cryptocurrency community for some time now. Theres huge money to be made via the act of ripping folks off. Some of it is phishing, other attacks focus on breaking in...

A week in security (August 15 - August 21)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Donut breach: Lessons from pen-tester Mike Miller: Lock and Code S03E17 Introducing Malwarebytes Cloud Storage Scanning: How to scan for malware in cloud file storage repositories JSSLoader: the shellcode edition CISA and FBI issue alert about Zeppelin ransomware H...

Viral video drives malvertising on social media platform

This blog post was authored by Jerome Segura Viral content shared on social media is highly coveted since it gets a lot of impressions and engagement. Unfortunately, the people who push this kind of content don't always have the best of intentions. We recently identified a malvertising campaign o...

Slack flaw exposed users' hashed passwords

Slack, the workplace communication platform, has notified some of its users that their hashed passwords have been subject to exposure for the last five years. The company wasnt specific in its notice, but Wired said that the flaw was in one of its "low-friction features". The flaw exposed hashed...

Now it's BlenderBot's turn to make shocking, inappropriate, and untrue remarks

Last Friday, Meta unveiled its new BlenderBot 3 AI chatbot, a conversational AI prototype. The company said its chatbot is designed to learn by having natural conversations with people online. It also improves its skills via human feedback. Meta also asserts with confidence that the more the AI...

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...

A week in security (August 1 - August 7)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Have we lost the fight for data privacy? Lock and Code S03E16 Wrestling star Mick Foleys Twitter compromised, selling PS5 consoles Millions of Arris routers are vulnerable to path traversal attacks When a sextortion victim fights back How to protect yourself and yo...

Ransomware review: July 2022

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom. In July, LockBit maintained...

Google delays Chrome third party cookie sunsetting…again

Weve seen many examples of third-party cookies being tackled by browsers recently. Its not so long ago that Firefox effectively locked down third-party tracking by isolating cookies into so-called jars. By doing so, their "Total Cookie Protection" seeks to prevent all those cookies on your PC...

Anti-vaxxer dating site exposes user data

An anti-vax dating site has been revealed as shockingly easy to compromise by security researchers. Many major aspects of the site, from membership subscriptions to support tickets, were found to be vulnerable. The site, called Unjected, has been around since last year. It functions as a sort of...

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...

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 ...

Cloud-based malware is on the rise. How can you secure your business?

There’s a lot of reasons to think the cloud is more secure than on-prem servers, from better data durability to more consistent patch management — but even so, there are many threats to cloud security businesses should address. Cloud-based malware is one of them. Indeed, while cloud environments...

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...

A week in security (June 13 – June 19)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Serious vulnerabilities found in ITarian software, patches available for SaaS products Update Chrome now: Four high risk vulnerabilities found Taking down the IP2Scam tech support campaign Don’t panic! “Unpatchable” Mac vulnerability discovered Introducing...

A week in security (May 23 – 29)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Update now! Nvidia released fixes for 10 flaws in Windows GPU drivers Chicago students lose data to ransomware attackers Hunting down your data with Whitney Merrill: Lock and Code S03E11 Unknown APT group has targeted Russia repeatedly since Ukraine invasion Zero-d...

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...

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...

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...

“Reject All” cookie consent button is coming to European Google Search and YouTube

Google will soon be giving European countries a "Reject All" button in the Search and YouTube cookie consent banner. This change, which was revealed by Googles Product Manager for Privacy, Safety & Security Sammit Adhya in a blog post, has already been rolled out in France and will be cascaded to...

Pegasus spyware found on UK government office phone

“When we found the No. 10 case, my jaw dropped." John Scott-Railton recalled after finding out on July 7, 2020 that Pegasus, the highly sophisticated flagship spyware of Israels NSO Group, was used to infect a phone linked to the network at 10 Downing Street, the UK Prime Ministers home and offic...

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...

Hive ransomware impacts California non-profit health organisation

Ransomware authors are once again targeting health services, holding important files to ransom and impacting potentially vital services. On this occasion, the victims are a non-profit organisation assisting people with their healthcare needs in California. When Hive ransomware strikes The victim,...