Chrome fixes 6 security vulnerabilities. Get the update now!

Google has released an update for its Chrome browser to patch six security vulnerabilities, including one zero-day. This update is crucial since it addresses one actively exploited vulnerability which can be abused when the user visits a malicious website. It doesn’t require any further user...

No thanks: Google lets its Gemini AI access your apps, including messages [updated]

If you're an Android user, you'll need to take action if you don’t want Google's Gemini AI to have access to your apps. That's because, regardless of your previous settings, Google now allows Gemini to interact with third-party apps. Through Gemini extensions, it already had the ability to...

A week in security (June 30 – July 6)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Drug cartel hacked cameras and phones to spy on FBI and identify witnesses Catwatchful "child monitoring" app exposes victims’ data Microsoft, PayPal, DocuSign, and Geek Squad faked in callback phishing scams Qantas: Breach affects 6 million people, "significant"...

AT&T to pay compensation to data breach victims. Here’s how to check if you were affected

AT&T is set to pay $177 million to customers affected by two significant data breaches. These breaches exposed sensitive personal information of millions of current and former AT&T customers. For those that have missed the story so far: Back in 2021, an entity named Shiny Hunters a known hacking...

A week in security (June 23 – June 29)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Gmail’s multi-factor authentication bypassed by hackers to pull off targeted attacks Thousands of private camera feeds found online. Make sure yours isn’t one of them Sextortion email scammers increase their "Hello pervert" money demands Many data brokers are faili...

Gmail’s multi-factor authentication bypassed by hackers to pull off targeted attacks

Russian hackers have bypassed Google's multi-factor authentication MFA in Gmail to pull off targeted attacks, according to security researchers at Google Threat Intelligence Group GTIG. The hackers pulled this off by posing as US Department of State officials in advanced social engineering attack...

23andMe raked by Congress on privacy, sale of genetic data

In a Senate hearing adequately titled “23 and You: The Privacy and National Security Implications of the 23andMe Bankruptcy,” 23andMe executives addressed concerns about the privacy implications of the company’s sale and the handling of associated genetic data. For those who missed the latest...

A week in security (May 26 – June 1)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Porn sites probed for allegedly failing to prevent minors from accessing content Take back control of your browser—Malwarebytes Browser Guard now blocks search hijacking attempts Deepfake-posting man faces huge $450,000 fine Fake AI video generator tools lure in...

FBI issues warning as scammers target victims of crime

The FBI has issued a warning about an ongoing fraud scheme where criminal scammers are impersonating FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 employees in order to scam people. Between December 2023 and February 2025, the FBI received over 100 reports of scams involving people posing as IC3...

4.7 million customers’ data accidentally leaked to Google by Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California leaked the personal data of 4.7 million people to Google after a Google Analytics misconfiguration. The tech giant may have used this data for targeted advertising, according to Blue Shield, which is one of the largest health insurers in the US. In a data breach notice o...

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...

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...

A day in the life of a privacy pro, with Ron de Jesus (Lock and Code S05E26)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Privacy is many things for many people. For the teenager suffering from a bad breakup, privacy is the ability to stop sharing her location and to block her ex on social media. For the political dissident advocating against an oppressive government, privacy ...

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...

Europol takes down criminal data hub Manson Market in busy month for law enforcement

A coordinated action between several European law enforcement agencies shut down an online marketplace called Manson Market that sold stolen data to any interested cybercriminal. What made this market attractive for cybercriminals was that they could buy data sorted by region and account balance...

Malicious QR codes sent in the mail deliver malware

Physical letters that contain a QR code to trick people into downloading malware are being sent through the mail, according to a warning issued by The Swiss National Cyber Security Centre NCSC. The letters are sent as if they come from the official Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and...

Warning: Online shopping threats to avoid this Black Friday and Cyber Monday

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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...

Warning: Hackers could take over your email account by stealing cookies, even if you have MFA

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI has issued a warning that cybercriminals are taking over email accounts via stolen session cookies, allowing them to bypass the multi-factor authentication MFA a user has set up. Here's how it works. Most of us don’t think twice about checking the “Remember...

City of Columbus breach affects around half a million citizens

A ransomware attack against the City of Columbus, Ohio—which drew public scrutiny following the city government's attempt to silence a researcher who told the public about the attack—has received a little more detail from an unexpected source: The Attorney General for the state of Maine. In a dat...

A week in security (October 21 – October 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: 100 million US citizens officially impacted by Change Healthcare data breach Pinterest tracks users without consent, alleges complaint After concerns of handing Facebook taxpayer info, four companies found to have improperly shared data LinkedIn bots and spear...

After concerns of handing Facebook taxpayer info, four companies found to have improperly shared data

Four tax preparation software companies failed to comply with government rules that require the sharing of tax-related info to be done only with specific disclosures and full tax-payer consent, according to an audit released by the Treasure Inspector General for Tax Administration TIGTA in the...

Browser Guard now flags data breaches and better protects personal data

Two things are true of data online: It will be collected and, just as easily, it will be lost. But a major update to Malwarebytes Browser Guard will better protect users from opaque data collection that happens every day online, as well as raising their awareness about corporate data breaches tha...

Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: A new way to help scrub personal data online

There’s an awful lot about you online that some awful groups want to exploit. The right combination of personal data points could help an identity thief fool a bank into opening a new, fraudulent line of credit in your name. Your alma mater, salary, and email address could help an online scammer...

PartnerLeak scam site promises victims full access to “cheating” partner’s stolen data

Earlier this week, we reported on a new type of scam that tells you your partner is cheating on you. However, we hit a dead end because we were unable to get hold of an original copy of the email. That was until the scammers were “kind enough” to send one to one of our co-workers. your partner is...

Toyota confirms customer and employee data stolen, says breach at third party to blame

Last week, a cybercriminal using the handle ZeroSevenGroup dumped 240GB of data on the infamous stolen data site BreachForums, that they said came from a hack on the US branch of car manufacturer Toyota. ZeroSevenGroup claims the dump includes customer and employee data. ZeroSevenGroup posted the...

Data theft forum admins busted after flashing their cash in a life of luxury

Two men without a clear source of income landed cyberfraud charges after being so flash with their ill-gotten cash that it gained the attention of the authorities. In 2022, Russian national Pavel Kublitskii and Kazakhstan national Alexandr Khodyrev arrived in Florida and requested asylum, which w...

AI girlfriends want to know all about you. So might ChatGPT (Lock and Code S05E17)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Somewhere out there is a romantic AI chatbot that wants to know everything about you. But in a revealing overlap, other AI tools—which are developed and popularized by far larger companies in technology—could crave the very same thing. For AI tools of any...

A week in security (July 29 – August 4)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Threat actor impersonates Google via fake ad for Authenticator Scammers are impersonating cryptocurrency exchanges, FBI warns Meta to pay $1.4 billion over unauthorized facial recognition image capture Apple fixes Siri vulnerabilities that could have allowed...

SIEM is not storage, with Jess Dodson (Lock and Code S05E16)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… In the world of business cybersecurity, the powerful technology known as "Security Information and Event Management" is sometimes thwarted by the most unexpected actors—the very people setting it up. Security Information and Event Management—or SIEM—is a te...

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...

How an AI “artist” stole a woman’s face, with Ali Diamond (Lock and Code S05E15)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Full-time software engineer and part-time Twitch streamer Ali Diamond is used to seeing herself on screen, probably because she’s the one who turns the camera on. But when Diamond received a Direct Message DM on Twitter earlier this year, she learned that h...

A week in security (July 1 – July 7)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ticketmaster hackers release stolen ticket barcodes for Taylor Swift Eras Tour Authy phone numbers accessed by cybercriminals, warns Twilio Affirm says Evolve Bank data breach also compromised some of its customers Prudential Financial data breach impacts 2.5 milli...

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...

Cybersecurity spend to soar in 2024: How companies can maximize their investment

"Spend smarter, not harder" is the mantra for 2024, as Gartner forecasts a 14.3% jump in global security and risk management spending—an uptick which brings a renewed focus on the need for cost-effective cybersecurity investments. Inefficient cybersecurity spending, a known problem, becomes even...

MongoDB warns customers about data breach after cyberattack

Database provider MongoDB has posted a security notice about a security incident in which attackers obtained unauthorized access to some of its corporate systems. The targeted system contained customer names, phone numbers, and email addresses among other customer account metadata, including syst...

The sound of you typing on your keyboard could reveal your password

As if password authentications coffin needed any more nails, researchers in the UK have discovered yet another way to hammer one in. The technique, developed at Durham University, the University of Surrey, and Royal Holloway University of London, builds on previous work to produce a more accurate...

Update your iPhones! Apple fixes two zero-days in iOS

Apple has released emergency security updates for iOS 17.1.2 and iPadOS 17.1.2 to patch for two zero-day vulnerabilities that may have been actively exploited. Apple said both vulnerabilities were in the WebKit component, which is the engine that powers Safari browser on Macs as well as all...

Will ChatGPT write ransomware? Yes.

This morning I decided to write some ransomware, and I asked ChatGPT to help. Not because I wanted to turn to a life of crime, but because I wanted to see if anything had changed since March, when I last tried the same exact thing. In short: ChatGPT has helped me, worryingly so. But more on that...

Ransomware gangs and Living Off the Land (LOTL) attacks: A deep dive

We’ve told you about ransomware-as-a-service RaaS gangs; we’ve told you about living off the Land LOTL attacks. What do you get when you bring the two together? Bad news. Our recent report, Threat Brief: Ransomware Gangs & Living Off the Land Attacks, takes a deep dive into why the intersection o...

A week in security (November 13 – November 19)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Signal is testing usernames so you don’t have to share your phone number State of Maine data breach impacts 1.3 million people Credit card skimming on the rise for the holiday shopping season Update now! Microsoft patches 3 actively exploited zero-days Ransomware...

Ransomware gang files SEC complaint about victim

In what seems to be a new twist on the ransomware theme, the notorious ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group has filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission SEC about the software company MeridianLink. ALPHV is one of the most active ransomware-as-a-service RaaS operators and...

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 ...

A week in security (October 9 - October 15)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Explained: Quishing Update now! Atlassian Confluence vulnerability is being actively exploited Giant health insurer struck by ransomware didn't have antivirus protection Ransomware review: October 2023 Stalkerware activity drops as glaring spying problem is reveale...

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...

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...

Multi-factor authentication has proven it works, so what are we waiting for?

Recently, Amazon announced that it will require all privileged Amazon Web Services AWS accounts to use multi-factor authentication MFA, starting in mid-2024. Our regular readers will know that we feel that passwords alone are not adequate protection, especially not for your important accounts. So...

Malicious ad served inside Bing's AI chatbot

In February 2023, Microsoft disclosed its new AI-assisted search engine, Bing Chat, powered by OpenAI's GPT-4. Even though Google has been dominating the search industry for years, this event was significant enough to generate not only interest but also plant the seed for a possible change in the...