Fake CAPTCHA scam turns a quick click into a costly phone bill

Researchers have documented a long‑running campaign that uses fake CAPTCHA pages to trick mobile users into sending dozens of international SMS messages in the background. If you’ve spent any time on today’s web, CAPTCHAs may seem like background noise: click a few traffic lights, prove you’re...

Chinese engineer stole US military and NASA software for years

International espionage isn't always about sophisticated malware and zero-day bugs. Sometimes it's as simple as pretending to be someone else asking for a favor. For four years, a Chinese aerospace engineer did just that. Dozens of researchers at NASA, the US military, and major universities hand...

A week in security (April 20 – April 26)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Medical data of 500,000 UK volunteers listed for sale on Alibaba How cyberattacks on companies affect everyone Apple fixes iOS bug that kept deleted notifications, including chat previews Roblox clamps down on chats and age checks as legal pressure builds Malicious...

Medical data of 500,000 UK volunteers listed for sale on Alibaba

Half a million Britons signed up to help cure cancer. Their data ended up for sale on Alibaba. The UK Biobank charity informed the British government of an incident concerning the medical data belonging to 500,000 British citizens being offered for sale on the Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba...

How cyberattacks on companies affect everyone

If you use the internet, you’ve likely been affected by cybercrime in some way. Even when an attack is aimed at a company, the fallout usually lands on ordinary people. The most obvious harm is stolen data. When attackers break into a business, it is usually customer information that ends up in...

Apple fixes iOS bug that kept deleted notifications, including chat previews

Apple has released a software update that deals with an issue that could allow deleted notifications to be retrieved. Something that, in at least one reported case, was used by law enforcement during forensic analysis. Apple fixed the issue in iOS and iPadOS versions 18.7.8 and 26.4.2 check...

Roblox clamps down on chats and age checks as legal pressure builds

Roblox has long faced criticism over child safety on its platform. Now it has started settling with state attorneys over the issue, and the total is climbing fast. On April 21, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced a $12.2 million settlement with the child-focused online gaming...

Malicious trading website drops malware that hands your browser to attackers

During our threat hunting, we found a campaign using the same malware loader from our previous research to deliver a different threat: Needle Stealer , data-stealing malware designed to quietly harvest sensitive information from infected devices, including browser data, login sessions, and...

Researcher claims Claude Desktop installs “spyware” on macOS

Security researcher Alexander Hanff wrote an article titled Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop. Claims like that are bound to create two sides, so we searched for an official rebuttal by Anthropic. But we couldn’t find one. It would surprise me very much if they’d...

Fake Google Antigravity downloads are stealing accounts in minutes

Somebody went looking for Google’s new Antigravity coding tool this week, clicked download, ran the installer, and got exactly what they thought they were getting. Antigravity installed cleanly. A shortcut appeared on the desktop. The application opened and worked. Nothing looked or felt wrong. B...

Real Apple notifications are being used to drive tech support scams

Scammers have found a way to abuse legitimate Apple account notification emails to trick targets into calling fake tech support numbers. According to a report from BleepingComputer, scammers create an Apple account and insert a phishing message into the personal information fields, then modify th...

Android 17 ends all-or-nothing access to your contacts

Some of the apps on your phone want your contacts. Most don't need them all, but have been happily slurping up the lot for years. Google has decided to do something about that with the next version of Android. Android 17 currently in preview is introducing a new Contact Picker that lets users gra...

Big Tech can stop scams. They just don’t (Lock and Code S07E08)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … A dreadful thing happens far too often whenever an older adult falls for a scam: They get blamed for it. Not the scammers who lied and cheated their victim out of money. Not law enforcement for failing to recover funds. Not even the Big Tech companies that...

Mythos: An AI tool too powerful for public release

Anthropic’s most capable model to date, Claude Mythos Preview aka Mythos, has been described as a “step change” in AI performance, especially on cybersecurity tasks. Anthropic tried to keep Mythos a secret until a few weeks ago, when a data leak revealed the existence of what the company said was...

A week in security (April 13 – April 19)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: This old-school scam is still working "Your shipment has arrived" email hides remote access software Browser Guard gets even better with Access Control "iCloud storage is full" scam is back, and now it wants your payment details A fake Slack download is giving...

This old-school scam is still working

When we read about this new malware tactic, or that novel social engineering approach, it’s easy to forget that there are scammers out there making a living from ancient methods. Recently, one of our researchers received this variation on the good old Nigerian advance-fee scam. From: Mrs.Inga-Bri...

“Your shipment has arrived” email hides remote access software

An attachment in an email impersonating DHL about a shipment contains a link to a preconfigured SimpleHelp remote access tool—an ideal starting point for attackers to explore a network, steal data, and drop additional malware. A German industrial spare parts and equipment supplier received an ema...

Browser Guard gets even better with Access Control

Have you ever been on a website when a pop-up suddenly asked for access to your camera, microphone, location, or notifications? Whether you clicked “allow,” dismissed it, or just wondered why it appeared, those permission requests aren’t always harmless. Some sites can abuse those permissions. Wi...

“iCloud storage is full” scam is back, and now it wants your payment details

A few months ago, we reported on a fake cloud storage alert that triggered a redirect chain to an app that has since been delisted from the Apple Store. The threat of losing your photos is a powerful lure, so scammers are now using it to steal personal and financial details. The Guardian warns...

A fake Slack download is giving attackers a hidden desktop on your machine

A trojanized Slack download from a typosquatting website is giving attackers something most users wouldn’t even know to look for: a hidden desktop running on their machine. The installer looks legitimate and even launches a working copy of Slack. But in the background, it can create an invisible...

Booking.com breach gives scammers what they need to target guests

Travel companies love telling you your data is safe. Booking.com just reminded everyone why that's a hard promise to keep. The Amsterdam-based booking giant began notifying customers on April 13 that "unauthorized third parties" had accessed guest reservation data. The compromised information...

AI clickbait can turn your notifications into a scam feed

Pushpaganda is the name researchers have given to an AI-assisted ad fraud, social engineering, and scareware operation targeting mobile users. For most people, Pushpaganda starts as something that looks completely normal. For example, a recommended article in your Google Discover feed the...

Fake YouTube copyright notices can steal your Google login

A convincing phishing campaign is going after YouTube creators, and if it works, attackers don't just steal your Google login. They can take over your entire Google account, including Gmail, your files, and payments, then hijack your YouTube channel and use your audience to run scams. The lure is...

From fake Proton VPN sites to gaming mods, this Windows infostealer is everywhere

We’ve uncovered multiple campaigns distributing an infostealer we track as NWHStealer , using everything from fake VPN downloads to hardware utilities and gaming mods. What makes this campaign stand out isn’t just the malware, but how widely and convincingly it’s being spread. Once installed, it...

April Patch Tuesday fixes two zero-days, including one under active attack

This month’s patch Tuesday looks to remediate 167 security vulnerabilities including two zero-day vulnerabilities, one of which is known to be actively exploited in the wild. This makes April one of those months where “Patch Tuesday” looks more like “patch the entire stack,” from servers and...

Credit Resources Vault: Why this credit email set off our scam alarms

If there is anything that annoys me more than a scammer, it's companies that behave like one, while staying just on the right side of the law. They manage to linger and disappoint customers for years. It's also why sometimes people think that Malwarebytes Scam Guard can be overly cautious when...

Omnistealer uses the blockchain to steal everything it can

A new infostealer dubbed Omnistealer is turning the blockchain into a permanent malware hosting platform, which is bad news for both companies and everyday users. It’s pretty common for malware to store its payload on a public platform, ideally one that adds some trustworthiness to the download...

ChatGPT under scrutiny as Florida investigates campus shooting

Chatbots don't kill people. But they can help others do so. On April 9, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that his office is investigating OpenAI over the role ChatGPT might have played in a deadly shooting at Florida State University, saying: "Subpoenas are coming." The campus...

Simply opening a PDF could trigger this Adobe Reader zero-day

Opening the wrong PDF in Adobe Reader was enough to let criminals quietly spy on your computer and unleash more attacks, even though everything looked normal. A researcher analyzed a malicious PDF and found that it abused a previously unknown flaw a “zero‑day” in Adobe Acrobat Reader. When a vict...

A week in security (April 6 – April 12)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Fake Claude site installs malware that gives attackers access to your computer ClickFix finds a new way to infect Macs Scammers pose as Amazon support to steal your account NSFW app leak exposes 70,000 prompts linked to individual users 30,000 private Facebook imag...

Fake Claude site installs malware that gives attackers access to your computer

Claude’s rapid growth—nearly 290 million web visits per month—has made it an attractive target for attackers, and this campaign shows how easy it is to fall for a fake site. We discovered a fake website impersonating Anthropic’s Claude to serve a trojanized installer. The domain mimics Claude's...

ClickFix finds a new way to infect Macs

ClickFix campaigns are looking for alternatives now that many Mac users have been made aware of the dangers of pasting certain commands into Terminal. Researchers found that ClickFix has kept the same social engineering playbook but completely sidestepped Terminal by using the applescript:// URL...

Scammers pose as Amazon support to steal your account

Cybercriminals using the so-called "spray and pray" tactic love to impersonate well-known brands. Especially ones with huge customer bases. Amazon reportedly has around 310 million active customers, so they certainly qualify as a brand worth impersonating. And it shows in the sheer volume of scam...

NSFW app leak exposes 70,000 prompts linked to individual users

MyLovely.AI, an AI “artwork” generation platform, has reportedly been compromised, affecting 106,362 registered users. The AI girlfriend app allows users to generate personalized NSFW content and engage in real-time conversations with AI-generated personas, often sharing highly personal prompts a...

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...

This fake Windows support website delivers password-stealing malware

A fake Microsoft support website is tricking people into downloading what looks like a normal Windows update. Instead, it installs malware designed to steal passwords, payment details, and account access. Because the file looks legitimate and avoids detection, it can slip past both users and...

Your extensions leak clues about you, so we made sure Browser Guard doesn’t

Did you know you can be profiled based on the browser extensions you use? Advertisers can detect which extensions are installed and use that to build a picture of the kind of user you are. For instance, do you pride yourself on being a good online shopper who never pays full price? Maybe you use ...

Russian hacking group targets home and small office routers to spy on users

British security officials found that a group linked to the Russian military is spying on users of compromised Small Office/Home Office SOHO routers in a broad cyber espionage campaign. A Microsoft blog goes into the technical details of these attacks. The group, which we’ll refer to as APT28, bu...

Timeshare owners warned to watch out for cartel-linked scams

If you own a timeshare and have been searching for a way out, you need to know who may be targeting you. In February, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against a timeshare fraud network linked to a major Mexican drug cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel CJNG. These aren’t your...

Traffic violation scams swap links for QR codes to steal your card details

As soon as people start to get to grips with a certain type of scam, criminals deploy new tactics to keep stealing money. Now people have learned to distrust links in text messages, scammers have changed the bait, and in 2026 the “new link” is often a QR code tucked inside a fake notice. The late...

Support platform breach exposes Hims & Hers customer data

Healthcare companies handle some of the most personal data imaginable. That makes them a magnet for hackers. And when those companies outsource their customer support to third-party platforms, every one of those platforms becomes another door someone can try to kick in. Telehealth giant Hims & He...

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...

Killer robots are here. Now what? (Lock and Code S07E07)

Big news : Lock and Code is nominated for a Webby Award! You can help us win the People's Voice Award by voting here. Vote now! This week on the Lock and Code podcast … We have to talk about killer robots. No, not the Terminator, and not some Boston Dynamics robot run amok. We have to talk instea...

That dream job offer from Coca-Cola or Ferrari? It’s a trap for your passwords

As layoffs surge and job seekers flood the market, phishing campaigns impersonating major brands, including Coca-Cola and Ferrari, are ramping up—and they’re more sophisticated than ever. The first scam we found uses a convincing booking page to collect personal details, then tricks victims into...

Blocking children from social media is a badly executed good idea

While we can probably all agree that there is more than enough proof that social media is bad for the mental health of our children, the methods we are trying to block or ban them seem to do more harm than good. Across the world, lawmakers are tripping over each other to be seen “doing something”...

Apple expands “DarkSword” patches to iOS 18.7.7

Apple widened its latest iOS 18 security update to cover far more iPhones and iPads, specifically to stop real‑world DarkSword attacks that can compromise a device from a single website visit. After researchers published their findings about the DarkSword attacks and an exploit kit abusing the...

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN receives full third-party audit

For the careful VPN customer today, so much depends upon a privacy promise, made, too often, by a company without proof. No-logs policies, modern encryption algorithms, a refusal to store sensitive customer information, and full ownership of servers are just some of the features that contribute t...

Wikipedia’s AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

The Internet is filled with people who insist on being right. In the past, at least they could be reasonably sure that they were arguing with other humans. Those days are gone, apparently. Wikipedia just had to ban an AI that was making edits on its own. Apparently, the AI took it personally. The...

WhatsApp on Windows users targeted in new campaign, warns Microsoft

Microsoft researchers found a campaign that abuses WhatsApp attachments to sneak a script onto Windows machines which will lead to the attacker gaining remote control. WhatsApp offers a desktop application for Windows and macOS, which users can synchronize with their mobile devices. Desktop...

Why we’re still not doing April Fools’ Day

People lost an estimated $442 billion to scams last year worldwide, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. The scale of that is hard to picture, but people's day-to-day scam experience is easier to recognize: Our research found that 44% of people say they encounter mobile scams every single...