How COVID-19 fuelled a surge in malware

2021 saw a massive surge in detections of malware, adware, and Potentially Unwanted Programs PUPs. It didnt matter what the computers were used for or what operating system they ran—across business and home computers, on Windows and on Mac, detections went up, enormously. Detections of malware on...

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...

The $43 billion Business Email Compromise threat

The FBI has released a public service announcement regarding the ever-present threat of Business Email Compromise BEC. This comes hot on the heels of an earlier release from the Las Vegas FBI department in April. Losses continue to mount, and were currently facing a scam racking up domestic and...

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...

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...

What’s happening in the world of personal cyber insurance?

Youve likely only seen cybercrime insurance primarily mentioned in relation to attacks on businesses. Most commonly, it’s cited with regard to ransomware attacks in the workplace, or associated data loss. Some folks think the mere presence of insurance simply encourages more attacks, and is hurti...

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...

Watch out for Ukraine donation scammers in Twitter replies

The invasion of Ukraine has been a money making opportunity for scammers since the moment it began: Fake donation sites, bogus Red Cross portals, phishing pages, the works. These scams can also be found on social media. Faking donations on Twitter Some users of social media have become very...

5 ways to spring clean your security

It is now officailly spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and with spring and the longer days comes the inescapable urge to shake off the lethargy of Winter and embrace the need to go through your stuff, throw a bunch of it out, and give the rest of it a shiny new lustre. And in our increasingly...

“Free easter chocolate basket” is a social media scam after your personal details

Holidays inspire fraudsters and scammers to create timely and effective ways to string people along and get them to give up either their money or their personal information. This is the case in this chocolate-themed scam. Cadbury UK has issued a warning to its 315,000 followers on Twitter about a...

Globant suffers network breach due to LAPSUS$ compromise

Globant, an IT and software development firm with offices all around the globe, admitted in a press statement Wednesday that it has suffered a breach in its network. Affected data includes but may not be limited to some source code and certain project documentation of clients. "We have recently...

Meta blocks Russia-Ukraine disinformation campaigns on Facebook, Instagram

Meta says it has detected and removed two disinformation campaigns regarding the current Russia-Ukraine war. These campaigns, it says, were run by groups in Russia and Ukraine to target Ukraine users. In the post, Nathaniel Gleicher, Metas head of security policy, and David Agranovich, Metas...

How Crisis Text Line crossed the line in the public’s mind: Lock and Code S03E05

Last month, Politico reported that Crisis Text Line, a national mental health support nonprofit whose volunteers help people through text-based chats, was sharing those chats with a for-profit company that Crisis Text Line spun-off in an attempt to boost funding for itself. That for-profit ventur...

A week in security (February 21 – February 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Potential cybersecurity impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Cyber lures and threats in the context of the war in Ukraine CISA warns of cyberespionage by Iranian APT “MuddyWater” Google and Microsoft accused of feeding smaller search engines spam ads Cyclops Bli...

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,...

“We absolutely do not care about you”: Sugar ransomware targets individuals

Ransomware tends to target organizations. Corporations not only house a trove of valuable data they cant function without, but they are also expected to cough up a considerable amount of ransom money in exchange for their encrypted files. And while corporations struggle to keep up with attacks,...

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...

CISA calls for urgent action against critical threats

In a CISA Insights bulletin the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA warns that every organization in the United States is at risk from cyber threats that can disrupt essential services and potentially result in impacts to public safety. The warning specifically reminds readers of...

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...

FIFA 22 phishers tackle customer support with social engineering

Players of smash hit gaming title FIFA 22 have become the target of a wave of attacks focused on account compromise. Up to 50 “high profile” accounts were hijacked by what may have been the same group. FIFA games are, traditionally, a big draw for scammers and phishers. Many sports titles offer...

$10m of funds goes missing in what appears to be a cryptocurrency rug-pull

There’s a lot of concern in the cryptocurrency realm at the moment. A yield farming platform "utilizing arbitrage to gain optimal yield with low risk" has gone AWOL. Site down, Twitter account deleted, no word from the team behind it explaining what happened. Worst of all, some $10 million worth ...

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...

A week in security (Dec 13 – 19)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Spear phish, whale phish, regular phish: What’s the difference? Kronos crippled by ransomware, service may be out for weeks 5 security lessons from 18 months of working from home What SMBs can do to protect against Log4Shell attacks After Log4j, December’s Patch...

Emotet’s back and it isn’t wasting any time

Emotet is one of the best known, and most dangerous, malware threats of the past several years. On several occasions it appeared to take an early retirement, but it has always came back. In January of this year, a global police operation dismantled Emotets botnet. Law enforcement then used their...

Attacker unmasked by VPN flubs charged with Ubiquiti hack

A veritable barn-stormer of an insider threat story has recently come to light. A former employee of Ubiquiti Networks, Nickolas Sharp, has been arrested and charged for allegedly hacking company servers, stealing gigabytes of information, and then rounding it all off with a splash of extortion...

BlackMatter ransomware group announces shutdown. But for how long?

The BlackMatter ransomware gang has announced they are going to shut down their operation, citing pressure from local authorities. And pressure there is. Only two weeks ago, we wrote about a warning that the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency...

Vaccine passport app leaks users’ personal data

Security and privacy advocates may have cause to worry after all: Portpass, a vaccine passport app in Canada, has been found to have been exposing the personal data of its users for an unknown length of time. On Monday, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC received a tip that "the user profiles ...

The face of tomorrow’s cybercrime: Deepfake ransomware explained

While many countries are beginning to ease up on their respective pandemic lock downs—which, in turn, also means that everyone will soon ease into a life that is not quite post-COVID-19—we find ourselves once more on the cusp of change, an outlook that makes some feel anxious and others hopeful...

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...

Bogus hack apps hack users back for cryptocash

Recently, we discovered a gold…er…APK mine of fake hacking apps. The "legitimate" versions of hack apps are intended to hack other apps in order to get something for free. Although it’s unclear what exactly these fake apps claim to hack, the real hack job is done to unsuspecting users. Search and...

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...

PHP2Shell: Why many websites had to go offline

If you’ve encountered websites in maintenance mode today, it may be a security precaution. Reports of attacks targeting two critical PHP vulnerabilities have prompted warnings to install emergency updates and consider temporarily taking affected services offline until they can be patched. The...

Amazon has an uncomfortably personal profile on you

Amazon’s “About You” page reveals what it thinks it knows about you—and you can’t simply switch it off. Dexerto reports that one shopper discovered her profile included the observation: “has flat buttocks” She suggested this might relate to a previous purchase of “butt scrunch leggings.” Whatever...

Loyalty points fraud is funding hacker holidays (Lock and Code S07E18)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Crooks are taking a holiday. They’re counting on you to fund it. For decades, cybercriminals have stolen roughly the same types of data. Biographical and personal details—like Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers—can be stolen t...

Patch Tuesday: Update now to fix 421 flaws, including three zero-days

Microsoft’s August 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses 421 Microsoft vulnerabilities, including 62 rated Critical. One Windows vulnerability has been exploited in the wild by the Lazarus group to gain SYSTEM privileges. The August update is smaller than July’s record-breaking release, but it's still amo...

Chick-fil-A loyalty accounts hijacked using stolen passwords

Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A is warning customers after attackers hijacked loyalty accounts using stolen passwords in a credential stuffing attack. Chick-fil-A says it detected suspicious login activity against some Chick-fil-A One accounts in June and launched an investigation. The company later...

Claude for Chrome flaw could let rogue extensions access your Gmail

First reported in May, ClaudeBleed is basically a “fake remote control” problem. A sneaky browser extension can pretend to be Claude’s own website and secretly drive the Claude for Chrome extension to read your data and take action in your accounts. The Claude for Chrome browser extension is an...

Apple patches Beats Studio Buds flaw that could turn earbuds into a wiretap

Apple has patched a Bluetooth flaw in Beats Studio Buds that could potentially turn your earbuds into a nearby wiretap. When you buy a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, you expect them to play your music and your calls—not someone else’s. But a vulnerability in Apple’s Beats Studio Buds shows how that...

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...

30,000 private Facebook images allegedly downloaded by Meta employee

Every tech company tells you your data is safe. They've hopefully got encryption, access controls, and zero-trust architectures—the whole glossy security brochure. And then someone on the inside writes a script to steal your private photos anyway. That's what a former Meta employee based in Londo...

A week in security (March 30 – April 5)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: That dream job offer from Coca-Cola or Ferrari? It’s a trap for your passwords Blocking children from social media is a badly executed good idea Apple expands "DarkSword" patches to iOS 18.7.7 Malwarebytes Privacy VPN receives full third-party audit Wikipedia’s AI...

Infiniti Stealer: a new macOS infostealer using ClickFix and Python/Nuitka

A previously undocumented macOS infostealer has surfaced during our routine threat hunting. We initially tracked it as NukeChain , but shortly before publication, the malware’s operator panel became publicly visible, revealing its real name: Infiniti Stealer. This malware is designed to steal...

Your tax forms sell for $20 on the dark web

Tax season is also peak season for identity theft. Criminals use stolen personal data to file fake tax returns and claim refunds before the real taxpayer does. Here’s how the fraud works, and how to protect yourself. What is Stolen Identity Refund Fraud SIRF? Stolen Identity Refund Fraud SIRF is ...

Fake Pudgy World site steals your crypto passwords

A phishing site impersonating the newly-launched Pudgy World browser game is targeting crypto users with a technique that goes well beyond a convincing logo and matching color scheme. Pudgy World is a free-to-play browser game built around the Pudgy Penguins NFT brand. Players explore a virtual...

Supreme Court to decide whether geofence warrants are constitutional

Google has weighed in on a court case that will decide the future of a powerful but contentious tool for law enforcement. The company submitted an opinion to the US Supreme Court arguing that geofence warrants are unconstitutional. A geofence warrant is a form of "reverse warrant" that turns a...

Pentagon ditches Anthropic AI over “security risk” and OpenAI takes over

On Friday the US Pentagon cut ties with Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the San Francisco-based company a "supply-chain risk to national security." The supply-chain risk designation means that no contractor, supplier, or partner doing business wi...

Password managers keep your passwords safe, unless…

I’m a big advocate of password managers. Granted, there are better alternatives for passwords like passkeys, but if a provider offers nothing but password options, which many do, you can’t do much about that. So, for the time being we seem to be stuck with passwords. Every reputable password...

What can’t you say on TikTok?

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … A funny thing happened on TikTok last month, and it has brought allegations of censorship, manipulation, and control. It was the week of January 22, and after a long legal battle, TikTok had finally—for the first time in its company history—moved its...

Meta patents AI that could keep you posting from beyond the grave

Tech bros have been wanting to become immortal for years. Until they get there, their fallback might be continuing to post nonsense on social media from the afterlife. On December 30, 2025, Meta was granted US patent 12513102B2: Simulation of a user of a social networking system using a language...