The Clubhouse database “breach” is likely a non-breach. Here’s why.

Before the work week ended last week Friday, a security researcher found a leak of what is claimed to be full phone numbers of users of Clubhouse, the new social media app everyone is talking about and just recently came out of beta. Clubhouse is an audio-only social media platform where, unlike...

OSX.XLoader hides little except its main purpose: What we learned in the installation process

Last week, Check Point Research described a new Mac variant of malware they call XLoader. It was identified as being the successor of something called Formbook, a very prevalent threat in the Windows world. According to Check Point, the Mac version of the malware is being "rented" as part of a...

A week in security (July 19 – July 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Stopransomwaredotgov, a one-stop hub for ransomware resources Beware, crypto-scammer seeks foreigner with BLOCK CHAIN ACCOUNT Remcos RAT delivered via Visual Basic US, EU, UK, NATO blame China for “reckless” exchange attacks HiveNightmare zero-day lets anyone be...

AvosLocker enters the ransomware scene, asks for partners

This blog post was authored by Hasherezade In mid-July we responded to an incident that involved an attack on a Microsoft Exchange server. The threat actor used this entry point to get into a Domain Controller and then leveraged it as a springboard to deploy ransomware. While examining the...

CNA legal filings lift the curtain on a Phoenix CryptoLocker ransomware attack

Two months after fully restoring its systems, CNA Financial, the leading US insurance company that was attacked by a group using Phoenix CryptoLocker ransomware, issued a legal notice of an information security incident to the Consumer Protection Bureau in New Hampshire. You may recall that Phoen...

Busted! Fraud-as-a-Service gang that sold 2FA-proof phishing arrested

The Dutch police announced that they arrested two Dutch citizens, aged 24 and 15, for developing and selling phishing panels. The police also searched the house of another suspect, an 18 year old who was not arrested. The people behind this illegal business called themselves the Fraud Family and...

5 years for swatter who caused a man’s death for a Twitter handle

Doxing or doxxing is in the news again, for an absolutely shocking story that ended with a mans death caused by a swatting attack. If you dont know what doxxing or swatting are, don’t worry. We’ll explain it all. The doxing 101 Doxing someone is a technique going back to the 90s. Back then,...

Millions of Windows machines affected by ancient printer vulnerability

A very serious security flaw in immensely popular printer drivers has been disclosed and it could affect many millions of Windows systems. The printer driver was issued by HP, but it’s also in use by Samsung and Xerox. All the affected printers are laser printers. The most surprising about this...

Pegasus spyware has been here for years. We must stop ignoring it

On July 18, a group of 17 newspaper and media organizations—aided by Amnesty International’s Security Lab and the research group Citizen Lab—revealed that one of the world’s most advanced and viciously invasive spyware tools had been used to hack, or attempt to hack, into 37 mobile phones owned b...

The life and death of the ZeuS Trojan

Whether youve read up on Greek mythology or youre simply a big fan of Marvel comics, the name "Zeus" should be familiar to you. In the context of cybercrime though, ZeuS aka the Zbot Trojan is a once-prolific malware that could easily be described as one of a handful of information stealers ahead...

ID theft ghouls targeting Surfside victims is appalling, but no surprise

We’ve written at length about account compromise and identity theft, and how criminals will often hijack accounts belonging to dead people. In many ways, it’s the perfect crime for anyone indulging in social engineering. The amount of abandoned accounts due to death can only ever go up, and nobod...

HiveNightmare zero-day lets anyone be SYSTEM on Windows 10 and 11

Users with low privileges can access sensitive Registry database files on Windows 10 and Windows 11, leaving them vulnerable to a local elevation of privilege vulnerability known as SeriousSAM or HiveNightmare. Doesnt sound serious? Reassured that users must already have access to the system and ...

US, EU, UK, NATO blame china for “reckless” Exchange attacks

Do you remember back when the latest urgent update was a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange? How is that only four months ago? The trigger for the urgent advice in March was the fact that Microsoft detected multiple zero-day exploits being used to attack on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchang...

Remcos RAT delivered via Visual Basic

This blog post was authored by Erika Noerenberg Introduction Over the past months, Malwarebytes researchers have been tracking a unique malspam campaign delivering the Remcos remote access trojan RAT via financially-themed emails. Remcos is often delivered via malicious documents or archive files...

Beware, crypto-scammer seeks foreigner with BLOCK CHAIN ACCOUNT

We’ve observed a 419-style scam also known as an advance fee scam which combines the promise of cryptocurrency riches with WhatsApp conversation. The mail, which arrived with the subject "Urgent respond", begins as follows: Greetings to you my friend, My name is Haifa Kalfan, I am the Store manag...

StopRansomware.gov brings together information on stopping and surviving ransomware attacks

The US Department of Homeland Security DHS and the US Department of Justice DOJ—along with other federal partners—have launched a new website as part of the US governments fight against ransomware: StopRansomware.gov. StopRansomware.gov is said to be a one-stop hub for ransomware resources for...

A week in security (July 12 – July 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: DNS-over-HTTPS takes another small step towards global domination Nope, that isn’t Elon Musk, and he isn’t offering a free Topmist Dust watch either Four in-the-wild exploits, 13 critical patches headline bumper Patch Tuesday Is crypto’s criminal rollercoaster...

“Seven or eight” zero-days: The failed race to fix Kaseya VSA, with Victor Gevers, Lock and Code S02E13

Kaseya VSA included at least “seven or eight” privately known zero-day vulnerabilities before it suffered a widespread ransomware attack that impacted hundreds of businesses, said Victor Gevers, chair of the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, or DIVD, a volunteer-run organization that...

US offers huge reward in fight against state-sponsored cybercriminals

The US Department of State has announced that its Rewards for Justice RFJ program is now offering: …up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, participates in malicious...

Does using a VPN slow down your Internet?

A Virtual Private Network VPN can stop others from snooping on or tampering with your Internet traffic. It does this by concealing your traffic inside an encrypted tunnel between you and your VPN provider. And because your traffic appears to join the the Internet from your VPN providers computer...

What is scareware?

Scareware is a type of rogue program which has been around for many years, arguably dating back to 1990. It can be installed without permission, or via deception and false promises. Scareware is primarily used to panic or worry someone into performing a task they otherwise wouldn’t have done. The...

SonicWall warns users of “imminent ransomware campaign”

This post has been updated with a statement from SonicWall below SonicWall has issued an urgent security notice warning users of unpatched End-Of-Life EOL SRA & SMA 8.X remote access devices that they have been made aware of an imminent ransomware campaign using stolen credentials. The exploitati...

Ransomware’s Russia problem

This blog post was written in collaboration with members of the Threat Intelligence Team. Last week, US news outlet NBC News caused a stir with an article proclaiming that the REvil ransomware used in the recent, colossal Kaseya supply-chain attack was "written to avoid computers that use Russian...

Is crypto’s criminal rollercoaster approaching a terminal dip?

It’s a turbulent time in the cryptomining realm, especially for malware authors. Some big attacks and a lot of publicity has resulted in prolific groups promising to disband, even if potentially only temporarily. Running a tighter ship The mining banhammer continues to swing as China keeps puttin...

Four in-the-wild exploits, 13 critical patches headline bumper Patch Tuesday

The list of July 2021 Patch Tuesday updates looks endless. 117 patches with no less than 42 CVEs assigned to them that have FAQs, mitigations details or workarounds listed for them. Looking at the urgency levels Microsoft has assigned to them, system administrators have their work cut out for the...

Nope, that isn’t Elon Musk, and he isn’t offering a free Topmist Dust watch either

Elon Musk is an incredibly popular target for scammers and spammers on social media. Attach his name to something he has no involvement in and watch it fly. Verified accounts on Twitter continue to be favourites for account compromise / fake Elon scams. Those often turn out to be Bitcoin related...

DNS-over-HTTPS takes another small step towards global domination

Firefox recently announced that it will be rolling out DNS-over-HTTPS or DoH soon to one percent of its Canadian users as part of its partnership with CIRA the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the Ontario-based organization responsible for managing the .ca top-level domain for Canada and...

A week in security (July 5 – July 11)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Racing against a real-life ransomware attack. Podcast with Ski Kacoroski. Kaseya CEO: “The impact of this incredibly sophisticated attack is very minimal” Patch now! Emergency fix for PrintNightmare released by Microsoft. Game over: Apex Legends players locked out ...

How to send an anonymous email

Sometimes readers ask us how to send an anonymous email or how criminals and scammers manage to send anonymous emails. Since this is not an easy question to answer, because, for starters, there are several ways to interpret the question, I’ll try to give you some information here. Interpret the...

Judge drops hammer, dishes 7 years slammer for BEC and romance scammer

A Texas resident has finally paid the price for a heady mix of malicious mail antics. A combination of business email compromise BEC scams and romance fakeouts bagged them $2.2 million across roughly 6 years. This is quite a divergent portfolio of scamming activity. You may typically assume BEC...

How one word can disable an iPhone’s WiFi functionality

A researcher has found a way to disable the WiFi functionality on iPhones by getting them to join a WiFi hotspot with a weird name. This shouldnt be happening. The first thing you learn in coding school when it comes to input which is literally any data a device has to do something with is to...

Malspam banks on Kaseya ransomware attack

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team recently found a malicious spam campaign making the rounds and banking on the ransomware attack that forced Kaseya to shut down its VSA service. This is a classic example of an opportunistic attack conducted by potentially another threat actor/group off t...

Kaseya update delayed for security reasons

Software vendor Kaseya has been caught in the chaos of a supply-chain compromise by the REvil ransomware gang since Friday. Around 40 managed service providers MSPs that rely on Kaseya VSA software to administer customers IT—and up to 1,500 of their customers—have been stricken with the ransomwar...

3 things the Kaseya attack can teach us about ransomware recovery

Only rarely do companies allow us a look inside their organization while they are recovering from a ransomware attack. Many find it more convenient to keep a low profile or to be secretive. A positive exception to this is found in the Dutch managed service provider MSP VelzArt, one of the many...

Game over: Apex Legends players locked out by protest message

Messages placed directly in or around games is a common hack technique. It can be used for trolling, phishing, scams, or anything else the message-placer can think of. Messages can also be placed in games for the purposes of advertising but thats a tale for a different day. Recently, players of...

UPDATED: Patch now! Emergency fix for PrintNightmare released by Microsoft

Last week we wrote about PrintNightmare, a vulnerability that was supposed to be patched but wasnt. After Junes Patch Tuesday, researchers found that the patch did not work in every case, most notably on modern domain controllers. Yesterday, Microsoft issued a set of out-of-band patches that sets...

Kaseya CEO: “The impact of this incredibly sophisticated attack is very minimal”

The official YouTube channel of Kaseya, the latest organization attacked by no less than the criminals behind REvil ransomware, released a video of Fred Voccola, Kaseyas CEO, giving a first-hand account of what happened during the attack, the facts on affected customers, and the next steps theyre...

Racing against a real-life ransomware attack, with Ski Kacoroski: Lock and Code S02E12

At 11:37 pm on the night of September 20, 2019, cybercriminals launched a ransomware attack against Northshore School District in Washington state. Early the next morning, Northshore systems administrator Ski Kacoroski arrived on scene. As Kacoroski soon found out, he and his team were on a race...

A week in security (June 28 – July 4)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Is it Game Over for VR Advergaming? Lil’ skimmer, the Magecart impersonator What is the WireGuard VPN protocol? Binance receives the ban hammer from UK’s FCA Fired by algorithm: The future’s here and it’s a robot wearing a white collar Second colossal Linkedin...

UPDATED: Kaseya hijacked, thousands attacked by REvil, fix delayed again

Malwarebytes does not use Kaseya products. Malwarebytes detects the REvil ransomware used in this attack as Sodinokibi. Latest updates July 7, 8:30 am, Kaseya VSA SaaS platform still offline, not updated as planned July 6, 3:40 pm, malspam using fake Kaseya security update July 6, 3:15 am,...

Beware password-spraying fancy bears

The NSA, FBI, and CISA, in cooperation with the UKs National Cyber Security Centre NCSC, have issued a report that describes in detail why, and how, they think that a Russian military unit is behind large-scale brute-force attacks on the cloud-IT resources of government and private sector compani...

Microsoft exec reveals “routine” secrecy orders from government investigators

Microsoft executive Tom Burt told Congressional lawmakers Wednesday that Federal law enforcement agencies send “routine” secret orders for customer information from the Seattle-based company, numbering anywhere from 2,400 to 3,500 such requests a year. “While the recent news about secret...

SMS authentication code includes ad: a very bad idea

SMS authentication codes are back in the news, and the word Id use to summarise their reappearance is "embattled." I can still remember a time where two-factor authentication 2FA, authentication grids, regional lockouts, Yubikeys, and offline authentication apps simply did not exist. And if they...

PrintNightmare 0-day can be used to take over Windows domain controllers

In a rush to be the first to publish a proof-of-concept PoC, researchers have published a write-up and a demo exploit to demonstrate a vulnerability that has been dubbed PrintNightmare. Only to find out they had alerted the world to a new 0-day vulnerability by accident. What happened? In June,...

Police seize DoubleVPN data, servers, and domain

A coordinated effort between global law enforcement agencies—led by the Dutch National Police—shut down a VPN service that was advertised on cybercrime forums. The VPN company promised users the ability to double- and triple-encrypt their web traffic to obscure their location and identity. The...

Babuk ransomware builder leaked following muddled “retirement”

In the last days of April 2021, the operators of Babuk ransomware announced they were going to focus on demanding a ransom for information stolen from compromised networks, leaving the encryption part of their operation behind. It meant that they no longer needed ransomware at all. “Babuk changes...

Second colossal LinkedIn “breach” in 3 months, almost all users affected

LinkedIn has reportedly been breached—again—following reports of a massive sale of information scraped from 500M LinkedIn user profiles in the underground in May. According to Privacy Shark, the VPN company who first reported on this incident, a seller called TomLiner showed them he was in...

Fired by algorithm: The future’s here and it’s a robot wearing a white collar

Black Mirror meets 1984. Imagine that your employer uses a bot to keep track of your “production level.” And when this bot finds that you are an under-performer it fires off a contract-termination mail. Does this sound like the world you live in? Unfortunately, for some people it is. The case...

Binance receives the ban hammer from UK’s FCA

Binance, the worlds largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchange network, has had a rough few days. First, Japans financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency FSA, issued its second warning to Binance on Friday, 25 June, for operating in the country without permission The first warning...

What is the WireGuard VPN protocol?

In layman’s terms, a VPN uses encryption to create a private online connection between a device and a VPN server. With a good VPN service, you can shield your data from curious eyes. A VPN protocol is the set of rules that shapes how your data travels between your computer, mobile phone, tablet, ...