New Facebook photo rule hoax spreads

Some hoaxes on Facebook are years old, but like a cat with nine lives they keep coming back again and again. This is certainly the case with this most recent hoax. Fact-checking site Snopes is reporting on a hoax that concerns Metas use of our photos, messages and other posts on Facebook. Users a...

FakeBat delivered via several active malvertising campaigns

February was a particularly busy month for search-based malvertising with the number of incidents we documented almost doubling. We saw similar payloads being dropped but also a few new ones that were particularly good at evading detection. One malware family we have been tracking on this blog is...

Ransomware review: March 2024

This article is based on research by Marcelo Rivero, Malwarebytes ransomware specialist, who monitors information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web sites. In this report, "known attacks" are those where the victim did not pay a ransom. This provides the best overall picture of...

Data brokers admit they’re selling information on precise location, kids, and reproductive healthcare

Information newly made available under California law has shed light on data broker practices, including exactly what categories of information they trade in. Any business that meets the definition of data broker must register with the California Privacy Protection Agency CPPA annually. The CPPA...

Going viral shouldn’t lead to bomb threats, with Leigh Honeywell: Lock and Code S05E06

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… A disappointing meal at a restaurant. An ugly breakup between two partners. A popular TV show that kills off a beloved, main character. In a perfect world, these are irritations and moments of vulnerability. But online today, these same events can sometimes...

A week in security (March 4 – March 10)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Patch now! VMWare escape flaws are so serious even end-of-life software gets a fix Update now! JetBrains TeamCity vulnerability abused at scale PetSmart warns customers of credential stuffing attack Predator spyware vendor banned in US ALPHV ransomware gang fakes o...

Patch now! VMWare escape flaws are so serious even end-of-life software gets a fix

VMWare has issued secuity fixes for its VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Foundation products. It has even taken the unusual step of issuing updates for versions of the affected software that have reached thier end-of-life, meaning they would normally no longer be supported. This flaws...

Update now! JetBrains TeamCity vulnerability abused at scale

JetBrains issued a warning on March 4, 2024 about two serious vulnerabilities in TeamCity server. The flaws can be used by a remote, unauthenticated attacker with HTTPS access to a TeamCity on-premises server to bypass authentication checks and gain administrative control of the TeamCity server...

PetSmart warns customers of credential stuffing attack

Pet retail company PetSmart has emailed customers to alert them to a recent credential stuffing attack. Credential stuffing relies on the re-use of passwords. Take this example: User of Site A uses the same email and password to login to Site B. Site A gets compromised and those login details are...

Predator spyware vendor banned in US

The US Treasury Department has sanctioned Predator spyware vendor Intellexa Consortium, and banned the company from doing business in the US. Predator can turn infected smartphones into surveillance devices. Intellexa is based in Greece but the Treasury Department imposed the sanctions because of...

ALPHV ransomware gang fakes own death, fools no one

For the second time in only four months, all is not well on the ALPHV aka BlackCat ransomware gangs dark web site. Gone are the lists of compromised victims. In their place, a veritable garden of law enforcement badges has sprouted beneath the ominous message "THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED." The...

Update your iPhones and iPads now: Apple patches security vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS

Apple has released a security update for iOS and iPadOS to patch two zero-day vulnerabilities which are reported to already have been exploited. Zero-day vulnerabilities are discovered by attackers before the software company itself - meaning the vendor has zero days to fix them. Both the two...

Check your DNS! Abandoned domains used to bypass spam checks

Researchers at Guardio Labs have discovered that a group of spammers is using long-forgotten subdomains from established brands like MSN, eBay, CBS, and Marvel to send out malicious emails. The emails can bypass spam checks and to recipients they look like they come from a legitimate source. A...

American Express warns customers about third party data breach

American Express has sent affected customers a warning that “a third party service provider engaged by numerous merchants experienced unauthorized access to its system.” In a subsequent update, American Express explained that it was not a service provider, but a merchant processor that suffered t...

No “Apple magic” as 11% of macOS detections last year came from malware

We’re going to let you in on a little cybersecurity secret… There’s malware on Mac computers. There pretty much always has been. As revealed in our 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report, a full 11% of all detections recorded by Malwarebytes on Mac computers in 2023 were for different variants o...

Pegasus spyware creator ordered to reveal code used to spy on WhatsApp users

A California federal judge has ordered spyware maker NSO Group to hand over the code for Pegasus and other spyware products that were used to spy on WhatsApp users. Meta-owned WhatsApp has been fighting NSO in court since 2019, after Pegasus was allegedly used against 1,400 WhatsApp users over th...

A week in security (February 26 – March 3)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: PikaBot malware on the rise: What organizations need to know Malicious meeting invite fix targets Mac users Pig butchering scams, how they work and how to avoid them Airbnb scam sends you to a fake Tripadvisor site, takes your money Facebook bug could have allowed...

PikaBot malware on the rise: What organizations need to know

A new type of malware is being used by ransomware gangs in their attacks, and its name is PikaBot. A relatively new trojan that emerged in early 2023, PikaBot is the apparent successor to the infamous QakBot QBot trojan that was shut down in August 2023. QBot was used by many ransomware gangs in...

Malicious meeting invite fix targets Mac users

Cybercriminals are targeting Mac users interested in cryptocurrency opportunities with fake calendar invites. During the attacks the criminals will send a link supposedly to add a meeting to the target’s calendar. In reality the link runs a script to install Mac malware on the target’s machine...

Pig butchering scams, how they work and how to avoid them

Pig butchering scams are big business. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved every year. The numbers are not very precise because some see them as a special kind of romance scam, while others classify them as investment fraud. The victims in Pig Butchering schemes are referred to as...

Airbnb scam sends you to a fake Tripadvisor site, takes your money

One of my co-workers who works on Malwarebytes’ web research team just witnessed a real life example of how useful his work is in protecting people against scammers. Stefan decided to visit Amsterdam with his girlfriend, and found a very nice and luxurious apartment in Amsterdam on Airbnb. In the...

Facebook bug could have allowed attacker to take over accounts

A vulnerability in Facebook could have allowed an attacker to take over a Facebook account without the victim needing to click on anything at all. The bug was found by a bounty hunter from Nepal called Samip Aryal and has now been fixed by Facebook. In his search for an account takeover...

Stopping a targeted attack on a Managed Service Provider (MSP) with ThreatDown MDR

In late January 2024, the ThreatDown Managed Detection and Response MDR team found and stopped a three-month long malware campaign against a Managed Service Provider MSP based in Europe. In line with our observations of attackers increasingly relying on legitimate software in their attacks, the...

ALPHV is singling out healthcare sector, say FBI and CISA

In an updated StopRansomware security advisory, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services HHS has warned the healthcare industry about the danger of the ALPHV ransomware group, also known as...

One year later, Rhadamanthys is still dropped via malvertising

It was just a little over a year ago that the Rhadamanthys stealer was first publicly seen distributed via malicious ads. Throughout 2023, we observed a continuation in malvertising chains related to software downloads. Fast forward to 2024 and the same malvertising campaigns are still going on...

Change Healthcare outages reportedly caused by ransomware

On Wednesday February 21, 2024, Change Healthcare—a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group—experienced serious system outages due to a cyberattack. In a Form 8-K filing the company said it: “identified a suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor had gained access to some of the Chan...

Android banking trojans: How they steal passwords and drain bank accounts

For the most popular operating system in the world—which is Android and it isn’t even a contest—there’s a sneaky cyberthreat that can empty out a person’s bank accounts to fill the illicit coffers of cybercriminals. These are “Android banking trojans,” and, according to our 2024 ThreatDown State ...

Identity theft is number one threat for consumers, says report

The German Federal Office for Information Security BSI has published a report on The State of IT Security in Germany in 2023, and the number one threat for consumers is… identity theft. The thing is, you can protect your devices and your online privacy as much as possible, but what happens when...

How to make a fake ID online, with Joseph Cox: Lock and Code S05E05

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… For decades, fake IDs had roughly three purposes: Buying booze before legally allowed, getting into age-restricted clubs, and, we can only assume, completing nation-state spycraft for embedded informants and double agents. In 2024, thats changed, as the use...

A week in security (February 19 – February 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Joomla! patches XSS flaws that could lead to remote code execution Update now! ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerability needs your attention Why ransomware gangs love using RMM tools—and how to stop them Signal to shield user phone numbers by default Vibrator virus...

Joomla! patches XSS flaws that could lead to remote code execution

On February 20, Joomla! posted details about four vulnerabilities it had fixed in its Content Management System CMS, and one in the Joomla! Framework that affects the CMS. Joomla! is an open-source CMS that’s been around since 2005, and has been one of the most popular CMS platforms by market sha...

Update now! ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerability needs your attention

ConnectWise is warning self-hosted and on-premise customers that they need to take immediate action to remediate a critical vulnerability in its ScreenConnect remote desktop software. This software is typically used in data-centers and for remote assistance. Together ConnectWise’s partners manage...

Why ransomware gangs love using RMM tools—and how to stop them

One of the most alarming trends our ThreatDown Intelligence team has noticed lately is the increased exploitation of legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management RMM tools by ransomware gangs in their attacks. RMM software, such as AnyDesk, Atera, and Splashtop, are essential for IT administrators...

Signal to shield user phone numbers by default

Chat app Signal will shield user’s phone numbers by default from now on. And, it will no longer be necessary to exchange phone numbers when people want to connect through the app. In November, we reported that Signal was testing usernames to eliminate the need to share your phone number. Signal h...

[updated] Vibrator virus steals your personal information

I know that some of you are expecting a post similar to that about a toothbrush botnet, but this is not a hypothetical case. It actually happened. A Malwarebytes Premium customer started a thread on Reddit saying we had blocked malware from trying to infect their computer after they connected a...

A first analysis of the i-Soon data leak

Data from a Chinese cybersecurity vendor that works for the Chinese government has exposed a range of hacking tools and services. Although the source is not entirely clear, it seems that a disgruntled staff member of the group leaked the information on purpose. The vendor, i-Soon aka Anxun is...

ThreatDown EDR update: Streamlined Suspicious Activity investigation

Navigating the complex world of alerts just got easier, thanks to our latest enhancements to the ThreatDown Endpoint Detection and Response EDR platform. The detailed technical information in EDR alerts—replete with complicated diagrams and references to advanced cybersecurity tactics—can overwhe...

Law enforcement trolls LockBit, reveals massive takedown

In an act of exquisite trolling, the UKs National Crime Agency NCA has announced further details about its disruption of the LockBit ransomware group by using the groups own dark web website. The LockBit dark web site has a new look Since the demise of Conti in 2022, LockBit has been unchallenged...

Wyze cameras show the wrong feeds to customers. Again.

Last September, we wrote an article about how Wyze home cameras temporarily showed other people’s security feeds. As far as home cameras go, we said this is absolutely up there at the top of the “things you don’t want to happen” list. Turning your customers into Peeping Tom against their will and...

Malvertising: This cyberthreat isn’t on the dark web, it’s on Google

On the internet, people need to worry about more than just opening suspicious email attachments or entering their sensitive information into harmful websites—they also need to worry about their Google searches. That’s because last year, as revealed in our 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report,...

Raccoon Infostealer operator extradited to the United States

A Ukrainian national, Mark Sokolovsky, has been indicted for crimes related to fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft and extradited to the United States from the Netherlands, the US Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Texas has announced. In March 2022, around the same ti...

LockBit, the world’s worst ransomware, is down

For the last two years the absolute worst, most prolific, most globally significant "big game" ransomware gang has been LockBit. This evening its position as ransomwares biggest beast is suddenly in doubt, following some non-consensual website redecoration at the hands of the UKs National Crime...

Why keeping track of user accounts is important

CISA the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a cybersecurity advisory after the discovery of documents containing host and user information of a state government organization’s network environment—including metadata—on a dark web brokerage site. An attacker managed to...

A week in security (February 12 – February 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: GoldPickaxe Trojan steals your face! Microsoft Exchange vulnerability actively exploited Massive utility scam campaign spreads via online ads Facebook Marketplace users’ stolen data offered for sale How ransomware changed in 2023 Malwarebytes crushes malware all th...

GoldPickaxe Trojan steals your face!

Well, the GoldPickaxe Trojan does not literally steal your face, but it does steal an image of your face in order to be able to identify as you. Researchers have found a family of Trojans, attributed to a financially motivated Chinese group, which come in versions for iOS and Android...

Microsoft Exchange vulnerability actively exploited

As it turns out, there was another actively exploited vulnerability included in Microsoft’s patch Tuesday updates for February. When Microsoft said in its update guide for CVE-2024-21410 that the vulnerability was likely to be exploited by attackers, they weren’t kidding. Soon after they changed...

Massive utility scam campaign spreads via online ads

For many households, energy costs represent a significant part of their overall budget. And when customers want to discuss their bills or look for ways to save money, scammers are just a phone call away. Enter the utility scam, where crooks pretend to be your utility company so they can threaten...

Facebook Marketplace users’ stolen data offered for sale

Personal data belonging to Facebook Marketplace users has been published online, according to BleepingComputer. A cybercriminal was allegedly able to steal a partial database after hacking the systems of a Meta contractor. The leak consists of around 200,000 records that contain names, phone...

How ransomware changed in 2023

In 2023, the CL0P ransomware gang broke the scalability barrier and shook the security world with a series of short, automated campaigns, hitting hundreds of unsuspecting targets simultaneously with attacks based on zero-day exploits. The gangs novel approach challenged a bottleneck that makes it...

Malwarebytes crushes malware all the time

About a month ago, The PC Security Channel TPSC ran a test to check out the detection capabilities of Malwarebytes. They tested Malwarebytes by executing a repository of 2015 “malicious” files to see how many Malwarebytes would detect. This YouTube video shows how a script executes the files and...