A week in security (February 17 – February 23)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Healthcare security lapses keep piling up SecTopRAT bundled in Chrome installer distributed via Google Ads Google Docs used by infostealer ACRStealer as part of attack DeepSeek found to be sharing user data with TikTok parent company ByteDance Malwarebytes introduc...

Healthcare security lapses keep piling up

Healthcare is one of the sectors that has the most sensitive information about us. At the same time it's one of the worst at keeping them secret. Because of its access and storage of our personal health information PHI and other personally identifiable information PII, the healthcare sector shoul...

A week in security (February 10 – February 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: A suicide reveals the lonely side of AI chatbots, with Courtney Brown Lock and Code S06E03 Apple ordered to grant access to users’ encrypted data Phishing evolves beyond email to become latest Android app threat Apple fixes zero-day vulnerability used in "extremely...

Fake Etsy invoice scam tricks sellers into sharing credit card information

This article was researched and written by Stefan Dasic, manager, research and response forThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes. As an online seller, you’re already juggling product listings, customer service and marketing—so the last thing you need is to be targeted by scammers. Unfortunately, a...

Apple ordered to grant access to users’ encrypted data

Last week, an article in the Washington Post revealed the UK had secretly ordered Apple to provide blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world. Since then, privacy focused groups have uttered their objections. The UK government has demanded to be able to access encrypted data store...

A suicide reveals the lonely side of AI chatbots, with Courtney Brown (Lock and Code S06E03)

Today on the Lock and Code podcast … In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy from Orlando, Florida, committed suicide after confessing his love to the one figure who absorbed nearly all of his time—an AI chatbot. For months, Sewell Seltzer III had grown attached to an AI chatbot modeled after the...

A week in security (February 3 – February 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: WhatsApp says Paragon is spying on specific users New AI "agents" could hold people for ransom in 2025 Valley News Live exposed more than a million job seeker’s resumes Small business owners, secure your web shop University site cloned to evade ad detection...

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...

UnitedHealth almost doubles victim numbers from massive Change Healthcare data breach

UnitedHealth says it now estimates that the data breach on its subsidiary Change Healthcare affected 190 million people, nearly doubling its previous estimate from October. In May, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty estimated that the ransomware attack compromised the data of a third of US individuals...

AI tool GeoSpy analyzes images and identifies locations in seconds

It's just become even more important to be conscious about the pictures we post online. GeoSpy is an Artificial Intelligence AI supported tool that can derive a person’s location by analyzing features in a photo like vegetation, buildings, and other landmarks. And it can do so in seconds based on...

AI-supported spear phishing fools more than 50% of targets

One of the first things everyone predicted when artificial intelligence AI became more commonplace was that it would assist cybercriminals in making their phishing campaigns more effective. Now, researchers have conducted a scientific study into the effectiveness of AI supported spear phishing, a...

2024 in AI: It’s changed the world, but it’s not all good

A popular saying is: “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.” Even though the saying is older than you might think, it did not come about earlier than the concept of artificial intelligence AI. And as long as we have been waiting for AI technology to become commonplace...

Our Santa wishlist: Stronger identity security for kids

Sorry for the headline, but we have to get creative to get anyone to read an article on a Friday like this one, even if it is an important story. As we enter the holidays and parents begin to rest after another hectic year of shopping for their kids, Malwarebytes Labs wants to draw some attention...

TP-Link faces US national security probe, potential ban on devices

The US government launched a national security investigation into the popular, Chinese-owned router maker TP-Link, with a potential eye on banning the company's devices in the United States. The investigation comes amid heightened tension between the US and the Chinese government, and after a...

4.8 million healthcare records left freely accessible

Your main business is healthcare, so your excuse when you get hacked is that you didn’t have the budget to secure your network. Am I right? So, in order to prevent a ransomware gang from infiltrating your network, you could just give them what they want—all your data. The seemingly preferred meth...

Americans urged to use encrypted messaging after large, ongoing cyberattack

A years-long infiltration into the systems of eight telecom giants, including AT&T and Verizon, allowed a state sponsored actor to steal vast amounts of data on where, when and who individuals have been communicating with. Speaking to Reuters, a senior US official said the attack telecommunicatio...

A week in security (November 25 – December 1)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Printer problems? Beware the bogus help Data broker exposes 600,000 sensitive files including background checks Medical testing company LifeLabs failed to protect customer data, report finds Explained: the Microsoft connected experiences controversy Spotify, Audibl...

Data broker exposes 600,000 sensitive files including background checks

A researcher has discovered a data broker had stored 644,869 PDF files in a publicly accessible cloud storage container. The 713.1 GB container an Amazon S3 bucket did not have password-protection, and the data was left unencrypted, so anybody who stumbled on them could read the files. The files...

“Hilariously insecure”: Andrew Tate’s The Real World breached, 800,000 users affected

Andrew Tate's online education platform The Real World—formerly known as Hustlers University—has been hacked and user data has been stolen. Hacktivists flooded the primary chatroom with emojis as proof that they had breached the site. After this they shared approximately 794,000 usernames of,...

AI Granny Daisy takes up scammers’ time so they can’t bother you

A mobile network operator has called in the help of Artificial Intelligence AI in the battle against phone scammers. Virgin Media O2 in the UK has built an AI persona called Daisy with the sole purpose of keeping scammers occupied for as long as possible. Basically, until the scammers give up,...

Air fryers are the latest surveillance threat you didn’t consider

Consumer group Which? has warned shoppers to be selective when it comes to buying smart air fryers from Xiaomi, Cosori, and Aigostar. We've learned to expect that “smart” appliances come with privacy risks—toothbrushes aside—but I really hadn’t given my air fryer any thought. Now things are about...

Modern TVs have “unprecedented capabilities for surveillance and manipulation,” group reveals

Your television is debuting the latest, most captivating program: You. In a report titled “How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era,” the Center for Digital Democracy CDD spotlighted a massive data-driven surveillance apparatus that ensnares the public through modern...

Large scale Google Ads campaign targets utility software

After what seemed like a long hiatus, we've observed threat actors returning to malvertising to drop malware disguised as software downloads. The campaign we identified is high-impact, going after utility software such as Slack, Notion, Calendly, Odoo, Basecamp, and others. For this blog, we...

Tor anonymity compromised by law enforcement. Is it still safe to use?

Despite people generally considering the Tor network as an essential tool for anonymous browsing, german law enforcement agencies have managed to de-anonymize Tor users after putting surveillance on Tor servers for months. Before we go into the what the agencies did, let's take a look at some...

Snapchat wants to put your AI-generated face in its ads

Snapchat is reserving the right to use your selfie images to power Cameos, Generative AI, and other experiences on Snapchat, including ads, according to our friends at 404 Media, The Snapchat Support page about its My Selfie feature says: “You’ll take selfies with your Snap camera or select image...

A week in security (August 26 – September 1)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Iranian cybercriminals are targeting WhatsApp users in spear phishing campaign Fake Canva home page leads to browser lock Telegram CEO Pavel Durov charged with allowing criminal activity CODAC Behavioral Healthcare, US Marshalls are latest ransomware targets SMS...

CODAC Behavioral Healthcare, US Marshalls are latest ransomware targets

The Qilin ransomware group listed CODAC Behavioral Healthcare, a nonprofit health care treatment organization, as one of their latest victims. Qilin seems to have a preference for healthcare and support organizations. One of their most well-known victims was the pathology lab services provider...

My child had her data stolen—here’s how to protect your kids from identity theft

Recently, I received a letter in the mail from a company about a data breach. The letter said that the company had been a victim of a cyberattack back in March in which files were scrambled what we know as ransomware. The attacker had also accessed sensitive files and customer health data. Sadly,...

National Public Data leaked passwords online

Earlier this month, a huge trove of data from scraping service National Public Data was posted online. The dump made international headlines because it included data on hundreds of millions of people, and included Social Security Numbers. As if that wasnt bad enough, KrebsOnSecurity is now...

A week in security (July 22 – July 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Meta takes down 63,000 sextortion-related accounts on Instagram Windows update may present users with a BitLocker recovery screen TracFone will pay $16 million to settle FCC data breach investigation Google admits it can’t quite quit third-party cookies Heritage...

CrowdStrike update at center of Windows “Blue Screen of Death” outage

A faulty update from the cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike crashed countless Windows computers and sent them into a “Blue Screen of Death” BSOD, grinding to a halt the global operations of airlines, hospitals, news broadcasters, transportation agencies, and more. The incident itself is not the...

Number of data breach victims goes up 1,000%

Nope, that headlines not a typo. Over one thousand percent. The Identity Theft Resource Center ITRC tracked 1,041,312,601 data breach victims in Q2 2024, an increase of 1,170% over Q2 2023 81,958,874 victims. The ITRC is a national non-profit organization set up with the goal of minimizing the ri...

Ticketmaster says stolen Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets are useless

While cybercriminals are offering free tickets to Taylor Swift Eras Tour and other events, Ticketmaster is telling would-be purchasers that these tickets will prove to be worthless. Those who have claimed responsibility for the Ticketmaster data breach say they’ve stolen 440,000 tickets for Taylo...

Personal data stolen from unsuspecting airport visitors and plane passengers in “evil twin” attacks, man charged

The Australian Federal Police AFP have charged a man for setting up fake free WiFi access points in order to steal personal data from people. The crime was discovered when an airline reported a suspicious WiFi network identified by its employees during a domestic flight. When the alleged...

ChatGPT accused of breaking data protection rules

Italys Data Protection Authority GPDP has uncovered data privacy violations related to collecting personal data and age protections after an inquiry into OpenAI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI has 30 days to respond with a defense. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence AI chatbot that can engage in conversatio...

Many major websites allow users to have weak passwords

A new study that examines the current state of password policies across the internet shows that many of the most popular websites allow users to create weak passwords. For the Georgia Tech study, the researchers designed an algorithm that automatically determined a website’s password policy. With...

A week in security (October 23 – October 29)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Malvertising via Dynamic Search Ads delivers malware bonanza Octo Tempest cybercriminal group is "a growing concern"—Microsoft Update now! Apple patches a raft of vulnerabilities Patch…later? Safari iLeakage bug not fixed Update vCenter Server now! VMWare fixes...

Cyberattack hits 5 hospitals

Canadian health service provider TransForm has published an update about the cyberattack at its member hospitals. TransForm is a not-for-profit, shared service organization founded by the five hospitals in Erie St. Clair to manage their hospital IT, supply chain, and accounts payable needs. The...

Face search engine PimEyes stops searches of children’s faces

In what may come as a surprise, subscription-based face search engine PimEyes seems to have realized that their service can be used for nefarious purposes. PimEyes’ CEO Giorgi Gobronidze told the New York Times that it has taken technical measures to block such searches as part of a “no harm...

Google Chrome wants to hide your IP address

Google is working out some kinks in the project formerly known as Gnatcatcher, which will now be known under the more descriptive name “IP Protection.” Which means that Chrome is reintroducing a proposal to hide users IP addresses, to make cross-site tracking more difficult. An Internet Protocol ...

Stalkerware activity drops as glaring spying problem is revealed

North America has a spying problem. Its perpetrators are everyday people. According to recent research from Malwarebytes, 62 percent of people in the United States and Canada admitted to monitoring their romantic partners online in one form or another, from looking through a spouses or significan...

Upgrading your Android device? Read this first

Last month, we wrote an article about what to do when upgrading your iPhone. Since then, we've received several requests to do a similar post about Android devices. Providing uniform and easy to follow instructions is a bit harder to do for Android, because there are many differences between make...

A week in security (October 2 - October 8)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Multi-factor authentication has proven it works, so what are we waiting for? Amazon Prime email scammer snatches defeat from the jaws of victory 2023 MITRE ATT&CK® Evaluation results: Malwarebytes earns high marks for detection, blocks initial malware executions...

Dependabot impersonators cause trouble on GitHub

GitHub is experiencing issues of the "breached account and malicious code" variety. ITPro reports that unnamed individuals have been compromising accounts and using them to install malware capable of password theft. Its a fairly elaborate scam which even includes imitation of GitHubs popular...

A week in security (September 11 - September 17)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Europol lifts the lid on cybercrime tactics Malwarebytes wins every Q2 MRG Effitas award & scores 100% on new phishing test Watch out, this LastPass email with "Important information about your account" is a phish iPhone 15 launch: Wonderlust scammers rear their...

PSA: Ongoing Webex malvertising campaign drops BatLoader

A new malvertising campaign is targeting corporate users who are downloading the popular web conferencing software Webex. Threat actors have bought an advert that impersonates Cisco's brand and is displayed first when performing a Google search. We are releasing this blog to warn users about this...

FreeWorld ransomware attacks MSSQL—get your databases off the internet

When we think of ransomware and brute force password guessing attacks, we normally think of RDP, but recent research from Securonix reminds us that anything secured with a password and exposed to the internet is of interest to cybercriminals. Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol has been a favouri...

Social Security Numbers leaked in ransomware attack on Ohio History Connection

The Ohio History Connection OHC has posted a breach notification in which it discloses that a ransomware attack successfully encrypted internal data servers. During the attack, the cybercriminals may have had access to names, addresses, and Social Security Numbers SSNs of current and former OHC...

Alert Prioritization and Guided Remediation: The future of EDR

Sleepless nights, missed threats, a deluge of notifications--the common symptoms of the bane of IT teams everywhere: Alert fatigue. Out of the litany of problems IT teams face every day, alert fatigue might be among the most pressing--especially considering that 30 percent of EDR alerts are ignor...

A week in security (July 31 - August 6)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: The end looms for Meta's behavioural advertising in Europe Microsoft Teams used in phishing campaign to bypass multi-factor authentication Film companies lose battle to unmask Reddit users FAQ: How does Malwarebytes ransomware rollback work? How to protect your...