An AI plush toy exposed thousands of private chats with children

Bondu’s AI plush toy exposed a web console that let anyone with a Gmail account read about 50,000 private chats between children and their cuddly toys. Bondu's toy is marketed as: “A soft, cuddly toy powered by AI that can chat, teach, and play with your child.” What it doesn’t say is that anyone...

[updated] A fake cloud storage alert that ends at Freecash

Last week we talked about an app that promises users they can make money testing games, or even just by scrolling through TikTok. Imagine our surprise when we ended up on a site promoting that same Freecash app while investigating a “cloud storage” phish. We’ve all probably seen one of those...

Match, Hinge, OkCupid, and Panera Bread breached by ransomware group

The ShinyHunters ransomware group has claimed the theft of data containing 10 million records belonging to the Match Group and 14 million records from bakery-café chain Panera Bread. Claims posted by ShinyHunters The Match Group, that runs multiple popular online dating services like Tinder,...

Malicious Chrome extensions can spy on your ChatGPT chats

Researchers discovered 16 malicious browser extensions for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge that steal ChatGPT session tokens, giving attackers access to accounts, including conversation history and metadata. The 16 malicious extensions 15 for Chrome and 1 for Edge claim to improve and optimize...

Spammers abuse Zendesk to flood inboxes with legitimate-looking emails, but why?

Short answer: we have no idea. People are actively complaining that their mailboxes and queues are being flooded by emails coming from the Zendesk instances of trusted companies like Discord, Riot Games, Dropbox, and many others. Zendesk is a customer service and support software platform that...

A week in security (January 12 – January 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: WhisperPair exposes Bluetooth earbuds and headphones to tracking and eavesdropping Dutch police sell fake tickets to show how easily scams work "Reprompt" attack lets attackers steal data from Microsoft Copilot Phishing scammers are posting fake "account restricted...

Phishing scammers are posting fake “account restricted” comments on LinkedIn

Recently, fake LinkedIn profiles have started posting comment replies claiming that a user has " engaged in activities that are not in compliance" with LinkedIn's policies and that their account has been " temporarily restricted" until they submit an appeal through a specified link in the comment...

Data broker fined after selling Alzheimer’s patient info and millions of sensitive profiles

California's privacy regulator has fined a Texas data broker $45,000 and banned it from selling Californians' personal information after it sold Alzheimer patients' data. Texan company Rickenbacher Data LLC, which does business as Datamasters, bought and resold the names, addresses, phone numbers...

Celebrating reviews and recognitions for Malwarebytes in 2025

Independent recognition matters in cybersecurity, and it matters a lot to us. It shows how security products perform when they’re tested against in-the-wild threats, using lab environments designed to reflect what people actually face in the real world. In 2025, Malwarebytes earned awards and...

pcTattletale founder pleads guilty as US cracks down on stalkerware

Reportedly, pcTattletale founder Bryan Fleming has pleaded guilty in US federal court to computer hacking, unlawfully selling and advertising spyware, and conspiracy. This is good news not just because we despise stalkerware like pcTattletale, but because it is only the second US federal...

CISA warns of active attacks on HPE OneView and legacy PowerPoint

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA added both a newly discovered flaw and a much older one to its catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV. The KEV catalog gives Federal Civilian Executive Branch FCEB agencies a list of vulnerabilities that are known to be exploite...

Phishing campaign abuses Google Cloud services to steal Microsoft 365 logins

Attackers are sending very convincing fake “Google” emails that slip past spam filters, route victims through several trusted Google-owned services, and ultimately lead to a look-alike Microsoft 365 sign-in page designed to harvest usernames and passwords. Researchers found that cybercriminals us...

A week in security (December 15 – December 21)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: CISA warns ASUS Live Update backdoor is still exploitable, seven years on The ghosts of WhatsApp: How GhostPairing hijacks accounts Chrome extension slurps up AI chats after users installed it for privacy Two Chrome flaws could be triggered by simply browsing the...

CISA warns ASUS Live Update backdoor is still exploitable, seven years on

Recently, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA added along with two others a vulnerability in ASUS Live Update to its catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV. The KEV catalog lists vulnerabilities that are known to be exploited in the wild and sets patch deadlines for...

Fileless protection explained: Blocking the invisible threat others miss

Most antivirus software for personal users scans your computer for malware hiding in files. This is, after all, how most malware is traditionally spread. But what about attacks that never create files? Fileless malware is a fast-growing threat that evades traditional antivirus software, because...

Millions at risk after nationwide CodeRED alert system outage and data breach

A nationwide cyberattack against the OnSolve CodeRED emergency notifications system has prompted cities and counties across the US to warn residents and advise them to change their passwords. CodeRED is used by local governments to deliver fast, targeted alerts during severe weather, evacuations,...

WhatsApp closes loophole that let researchers collect data on 3.5B accounts

Messaging giant WhatsApp has around three billion users in more than 180 countries. Researchers say they were able to identify around 3.5 billion registered WhatsApp accounts thanks to a flaw in the software. That higher number is possible because WhatsApp’s API returns all accounts registered to...

Black Friday scammers offer fake gifts from big-name brands to empty bank accounts

Black Friday is supposed to be chaotic, sure, but not this chaotic. While monitoring malvertising patterns ahead of the holiday rush, I uncovered one of the most widespread and polished Black Friday scam campaigns circulating online right now. It’s not a niche problem. Our own research shows that...

Be careful responding to unexpected job interviews

One of our customers was contacted on LinkedIn about a job offer. The initial message was followed up by an email: “Thank you for your interest in the Senior Construction Manager position at company. After reviewing your background, we were impressed with your experience and would like to invite...

Your passport, now on your iPhone. Helpful or risky?

Apple has launched Digital ID, a way for users in the US to create and present a government-issued ID in Apple Wallet using their passport information. For now, it works only for identity verification at Transportation Security Administration TSA checkpoints in more than 250 airports. Apple says...

Are you paying more than other people? NY cracks down on surveillance pricing

When you search for a product online, you might think you're getting the same price as everyone else. Think again. Your price might be different based on everything from your location to what you've looked at online. Companies often use algorithms to set their prices that rely heavily on customer...

Phishing emails disguised as spam filter alerts are stealing logins

Cybercriminals are spoofing "email delivery" notifications to look like they came from spam filters inside your own organization. The goal is to lure you to a phishing site that steals login credentials—credentials that could unlock your email, cloud storage or other personal accounts. The email...

Stolen iPhones are locked tight, until scammers phish your Apple ID credentials

One of the reassuring things about owning an iPhone was knowing you could lock it if it got lost or stolen. Without your passcode, fingerprint or face to unlock it, it would be useless to anyone else. Now, though, some phone thieves have found a workaround, not by breaking Apple's security, but b...

Malwarebytes aces PCMag Readers’ Choice Awards and AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation tests

Malwarebytes proudly topped three categories in PCMag’s 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards, recognized for exceptional protection and user satisfaction. We also earned the latest badge from AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation’s September “Advanced In-The-Wild Malware Test” by blocking 100% of malware samples...

Atlas browser’s Omnibox opens up new privacy and security risks

It seems that with every new agentic browser we discover yet another way to abuse one. OpenAI recently introduced a ChatGPT based AI browser called Atlas. It didn’t take researchers long to find that the combined search and prompt bar—called the Omnibox—can be exploited. By pasting a specially...

Around 70 countries sign new UN Cybercrime Convention—but not everyone’s on board

Around 70 countries have signed the new United Nations UN Convention against Cybercrime—the first global treaty designed to combat cybercrime through unified international rules and cooperation. The treaty needs at least 40 UN member states to ratify it before it becomes international law. Once t...

Home Depot Halloween phish gives users a fright, not a freebie

We received a timely phishing email pretending to come from Home Depot. It claimed we’d won a Gorilla Carts dump cart that’s a sort of four-wheeled wheelbarrow for anyone unfamiliar—and said it was just one click away. It wasn’t. The whole image in the email was clickable, and it hid plenty of...

Windows update breaks USB support in recovery mode

We usually tell our faithful readers to install updates as soon as possible, but this time there’s an exception. Microsoft’s October security update has disabled USB mice and keyboards in the Windows Recovery Environment WinRE. WinRE is a special mode built into Windows that helps you fix problem...

You can poison AI with just 250 dodgy documents

Researchers have shown how you can corrupt an AI and make it talk gibberish by tampering with just 250 documents. The attack, which involves poisoning the data that an AI trains on, is the latest in a long line of research that has uncovered vulnerabilities in AI models. Anthropic which produces...

Under the engineering hood: Why Malwarebytes chose WordPress as its CMS

It might surprise some that a security company would choose WordPress as the backbone of its digital content operations. After all, WordPress is often associated with open-source plugins, community themes, and a wide range of deployment practices—some stronger than others. But that perception...

Mango discloses data breach at third-party provider

Mango has reported a data breach at one of its external marketing service providers. The Spanish fashion retailer says that only personal contact information has been exposed—no financial data. The breach took place at the service provider and did not affect Mango’s own systems. According to the...

From threats to apology, hackers pull child data offline after public backlash

Last week we yelled at some “hackers” that threatened parents after stealing data from their children's nursery. This followed a BBC report that a group calling itself “Radiant” claimed to have stolen sensitive data related to around 8,000 children from nursery chain Kido, which operates in the U...

Gemini AI flaws could have exposed your data

Security researchers discovered three vulnerabilities in Google's Gemini artificial intelligence AI assistant. Although now patched, this "Trifecta", as the researchers called it, raises important questions about how safe AI tools really are, especially as they become a part of services many of u...

Scammers are impersonating the FBI to steal your personal data

Been scammed? Hoping to report it to the FBI? Definitely do so, but be careful. Spoofed versions of the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 website are now circulating online, and they lead straight back to the scammers. The FBI issued an advisory last week, warning that cybercriminals are...

Beware of Zelle transfer scams

As we have said many times before, falling for a scam can happen to the best of us. And it can ruin lives. In our podcast How a scam hunter got scammed, scam hunter Julie-Anne Kearns talked about how she had been duped by people pretending to be from HMRC, which is the UK’s version of the US...

ChatGPT solves CAPTCHAs if you tell it they’re fake

If you’re seeing fewer or different CAPTCHA puzzles in the near future, that’s not because website owners have agreed that they’re annoying, but it might be because they no longer prove that the visitor is human. For those that forgot what CAPTCHA stands for: Completely Automated Public Turing te...

224 malicious apps removed from the Google Play Store after ad fraud campaign discovered

Researchers have discovered a large ad fraud campaign on Google Play Store. The Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team found 224 malicious apps which were downloaded over 38 million times and generated up to 2.3 billion ad requests per day. They named the campaign "SlopAds." Ad fraud is a...

Grok, ChatGPT, other AIs happy to help phish senior citizens

If you are under the impression that cybercriminals need to get their hands on compromised AI chatbots to help them do their dirty work, think again. Some AI chatbots are just so user friendly that they can help the user craft phishing text, and even malicious HTML and Javascript code. A few week...

“A dare, a challenge, a bit of fun:” Children are hacking their own schools’ systems, says study

As if ransomware wasn’t enough of a security problem for the sector, educational institutions also need to worry about their own students, a recent study shows. Last week, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office ICO published a report about the "insider threat of students". Here are a few key...

Watch out for the “We are hiring” remote online evaluator message scam

Looking at our team’s recent text messages, you’d think that remote online evaluators are in high demand right now. Several members of our team have received the almost exact same job offer scam texts. The content of the messages is almost identical, but there is a variation in background images...

Fake Bureau of Motor Vehicles texts are after your personal and banking details

Scammers are sending out texts that claim to be from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles BMV, saying that you have outstanding traffic tickets. Here's an example, which was sent to one of our employees. “Ohio BMV Final Notice: Enforcement Begins September 10nd. Our records indicate that as of today, you...

TP-Link warns of botnet infecting routers and targeting Microsoft 365 accounts

TP-Link has issued a warning about a botnet exploiting two vulnerabilities to infect small office/home SOHO routers, which are then weaponized to attack Microsoft 365 accounts. The vulnerabilities affect the Archer C7 and TL-WR841N/ND routers, though other models may also be at risk. Despite the...

77 malicious apps removed from Google Play Store

Google has removed 77 malicious apps from the Google Play Store. Before they were removed, researchers at ThreatLabz discovered the apps had been installed over 19 million times. One of the malware families discovered by the researchers is a banking Trojan known as Anatsa or TeaBot. This banking...

Clickjack attack steals password managers’ secrets

Sometimes it can seem as though everything's toxic online, and the latest good thing turned bad is here: Browser pop-ups that look like they're trying to help or authenticate you could be programmed to steal data from your password manager. To make matters worse, most browser extension-based...

Google settles YouTube lawsuit over kids’ privacy invasion and data collection

Google has agreed to a $30 million settlement in the US over allegations that it illegally collected data from underage YouTube users for targeted advertising. The lawsuit claims Google tracked the personal information of children under 13 without proper parental consent, which is a violation of...

Italian hotels breached for tens of thousands of scanned IDs

The Computer Emergency Response Team CERT for Italy's "Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale" AGID issued a warning that cybercriminals are selling stolen identity documents from hotels operating in Italy. This summer, a criminal hacker group named “mydocs” infiltrated the booking systems of at least ten...

Russians hacked US courts, say investigators

Russia is after secret files in the US court system, according to reports this week—and its hackers appear to have reached at least some of them. Last week, news broke of a successful cyberattack against the decades-old US court filing system. Called Case Management/Electronic Case Files CM/ECF,...

That “Amazon Safety Recall” message may well be a scam

Scammers are using the age old tactic of scaring victims into clicking by sending out fake product recall messages from Amazon. The text message tells you that the item does not meet Amazon’s standards, and tries to install some urgency by claiming it is not safe to use. It also includes a link...

Adult sites trick users into Liking Facebook posts using a clickjack Trojan

As the use of age verification to access adult websites increases in various countries around the world, shady websites with adult content have started a timely malware-fueled campaign to promote links to their own websites. During our daily rounds on Facebook, looking for the latest scams, we...

VPN use rises following Online Safety Act’s age verification controls

As the UK's Online Safety Act came into effect on Friday—along with its age verification controls—the use of virtual private network VPN services has skyrocketed by up to 20-fold across the region. Top10VPN, which monitors VPN traffic around the world, spotted UK VPN traffic spiking 1,327% on Jul...