Adware and PUPs families add push notifications as an attack vector

Some existing families of potentially unwanted programs and adware have added browser push notifications to their weapons arsenal. Offering themselves up as browser extensions on Chrome and Firefox, these threats pose as useful plugins then haggle users with notifications. A family of search...

Apple iOS 13 will better protect user privacy, but more could be done

Last week, Apple introduced several new privacy features to its latest mobile operating system, iOS 13. The Internet, predictably, expressed doubt, questioning Apple’s oversized influence, its exclusive pricing model that puts privacy out of reach for anyone who can’t drop hundreds of dollars on ...

MegaCortex continues trend of targeted ransomware attacks

MegaCortex is a relatively new ransomware family that continues the 2019 trend of threat actors developing ransomware specifically for targeted attacks on enterprises. While GandCrab apparently shut its doors, several other bespoke, artisanal ransomware families have taken its place, including...

Maine governor signs ISP privacy bill

Less than one week after Maine Governor Janet Mills received one of the nation’s most privacy-protective state bills on her desk, she signed it into law. The move makes Maine the latest US state to implement its own online privacy protections. The law, which will go into effect July 1, 2020, bloc...

Cybersecurity pros think the enemy is winning

There is a saying in security that the bad guys are always one step ahead of defense. Two new sets of research reveal that the constant cat-and-mouse game is wearing on security professionals, and many feel they are losing in the war against cybercriminals. The first figures are from the...

A week in security (June 3 – 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we rounded up some leaks and breaches, reported about Magecart skimmers found on Amazon CloudFront CDN, proudly announced we were awarded as Best Cybersecurity Vendor Blog at the annual EU Security Blogger Awards, discussed how Maine inches closer to shutting down...

Video game portrayals of hacking: NITE Team 4

Note: The developers of NITE Team 4 granted the blog author access to the game plus DLC content. A little while ago, an online acquaintance of mine asked if a new video game based on hacking called NITE Team 4 was in any way realistic, or “doable” in terms of the types of hacking it portrayed...

Hyperlink auditing: where has my option to disable it gone?

There is a relatively old method that might be gaining traction to follow users around on the world wide web. Most Internet users are aware of the fact that they are being tracked in several ways. And awareness is a good start. In a state of awareness, you can adjust your behavior accordingly, an...

Malwarebytes Labs wins best cybersecurity vendor blog at InfoSec’s European Security Blogger Awards

Infosec Europe is now well underway, and last night was the annual EU Security Blogger Awards, where InfoSecurity Magazine: …recognises the best blogs in the industry as first nominated by peers and then judged by a panel of mostly respected industry experts. Malwarebytes Labs was announced as...

Maine inches closer to shutting down ISP pay-for-privacy schemes

Maine residents are one step closer to being protected from the unapproved use, sharing, and sale of their data by Internet service providers ISPs. A new state bill, already approved by the state House of Representatives and Senate, awaits the governor’s signature. If signed, the bill would provi...

Magecart skimmers found on Amazon CloudFront CDN

Update 06-08-2019: The compromises of Amazon S3 buckets continue and some large sites are being affected. Our crawler spotted a malicious injection that loads a skimmer for the Washington Wizards page on the official NBA.com website. The skimmer was inserted in this JavaScript library:...

A week in security (May 27 – June 2)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took readers through a deep dive—way down the rabbit hole—into the novel malware called “Hidden Bee.” We also looked at the potential impact of a government agency’s privacy framework, and delivered to readers everything they needed to know about ATM attacks and...

Leaks and breaches: a roundup

It’s time for one of our semi-regular breach/data exposure roundup blogs, as the last few days have brought us a few monsters. If you use any of the below sites, or if you think some of your data has been sitting around exposed, we’ll hopefully give you a better idea of what the issue is. Seeing ...

Hidden Bee: Let’s go down the rabbit hole

Some time ago, we discussed the interesting malware, Hidden Bee. It is a Chinese miner, composed of userland components, as well as of a bootkit part. One of its unique features is a custom format used for some of the high-level elements this format was featured in my recent presentation at SAS...

Ransomware isn’t just a big city problem

This month, one ransomware story has been making a lot of waves: the attack on Baltimore city networks. This attack has been receiving more press than normal, which could be due to the actions taken or not taken by the city government, as well as rumors about the ransomware infection mechanism...

NIST’s privacy framework lets privacy tell its own story

Online privacy remains unsolved. Congress prods at it, some companies fumble with it while a small handful excel, and the public demands it. But one government agency is trying to bring everyone together to fix it. As the Senate sits on no fewer than four data privacy bills that their own members...

Everything you need to know about ATM attacks and fraud: Part 1

Flashback to two years ago. At exactly 12:33 a.m., a solitary ATM somewhere in Taichung City, Taiwan, spewed out 90,000 TWD New Taiwan Dollar—about US$2,900 today—in bank notes. No one was cashing out money from the ATM at the time. In fact, this seemingly odd system glitch was actually a test: T...

Employee education strategies that work to change behavior

When people make the decision to get in shape, they have to commit the time and energy to do so. Going to the gym once isn’t going to cut it. The same is true when it comes to changing the culture of an organization. In order to be effective in changing employee behavior, training needs to be...

A week in security (May 20 – 26)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a look at a skimmer pretending to be a payment service provider, gave an overview of what riskware is, took a deep dive into concerns about PACS leaks, and dug around in the land of “These Governments said fix it…hurry up”. Other cybersecurity news Changes...

Medical industry struggles with PACS data leaks

In the medical world, sharing patient data between organizations and specialists has always been an issue. X-Rays, notes, CT scans, and any other data or related files have always existed and been shared in their physical forms slides, paperwork. When a patient needed to take results of a test to...

Knowing when it’s worth the risk: riskware explained

If there’s one thing I like more than trivia quizzes, it’s quotes. Positive, inspirational, and motivational quotes. Quotes that impart a degree of ancient wisdom, or those that make you stop and consider. Reading them melts our fears, sorrows, and feelings of inadequacy away. Some of the most...

Governments increasingly eye social media meltdown

These are trying times for social networks, with endless reports of harassment and abuse not being tackled and many users leaving platforms forever. The major sites such as Facebook and Twitter do what they can, but sheer userbase volume and erroneous automated feedback leave people cold. Bugs su...

Skimmer acts as payment service provider via rogue iframe

Criminals continue to target online stores to steal payment details from unaware customers at a rapid pace. There are many different ways to go about it, from hacking the shopping site itself, to compromising its supply-chain. A number of online merchants externalize the payment process to a...

A week in security (May 13 – 19)

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs reviewed active and unique exploit kits targeting consumers and businesses alike, reported about a flaw in WhatsApp used to target a human rights lawyer, and wrote about an important Microsoft patch that aimed to prevent a "WannaCry level" attack. We also profiled the...

4 lessons to be learned from the DOE’s DDoS attack

Analysts, researchers, industry professionals, and pundits alike have all posited the dangers of the next-generation “smart grid,” particularly when it comes to cybersecurity. They warn that without the right measures in place, unscrupulous parties could essentially wreak havoc on the bulk of...

Microsoft pushes patch to prevent ‘WannaCry level’ vulnerability

This month marks the two-year anniversary since the infamous WannaCry attack. As an anniversary present to the world, Microsoft has pushed out patches to secure a newly-identified Remote Desktop Protocol RDP vulnerability found in certain Windows operating systems. The potential damage of the...

Threat spotlight: CrySIS, aka Dharma ransomware, causing a crisis for businesses

CrySIS, aka Dharma, is a family of ransomware that has been evolving since 2006. We have noticed that this ransomware has become increasingly active lately, increasing by a margin of 148 percent from February until April 2019. The uptick in detections may be due to CrySIS' effective use of multip...

WhatsApp fix goes live after targeted attack on human rights lawyer

If you use WhatsApp, you’ll want to update both app and device as soon as possible due to a freshly-discovered exploit. The vulnerability was found in Google Android, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows Phone builds of the app. Unlike many mobile attacks, potential victims aren’t required to install...

Exploit kits: spring 2019 review

Exploit kit activity remains fairly unchanged since our last winter review in terms of active distribution campaigns. But this spring edition will feature a new exploit kit and another atypical EK, in that it specifically goes after routers. The main driver behind these drive-by download attacks...

A week in security (May 6 – 12)

Last week on Labs, we discussed what to do when you discover a data breach, how 5G could impact cybersecurity strategy, the top six takeaways for user privacy, vulnerabilities in financial mobile apps that put consumers and businesses at risk, and in our series about vital infrastructure, we...

Threats target financial institutions, fintech, and cryptocurrencies

With news of a malware attack on accounting firm Wolters Kluwer causing a "quiet panic" in the accounting world this week, our assertion that financial institutions—from banks to brokers—are part of the vital infrastructure of society has been solidified. According to its website, Wolters Kluwer...

How 5G could impact cybersecurity strategy

With the recent news that South Korea has rolled out the world’s first 5G network, it’s clear that we’re on the precipice of the wireless technology’s widespread launch. Offering speeds anywhere from 20 to 100 times faster than 4G long-term evolution LTE, the next generation of wireless networks...

Vulnerabilities in financial mobile apps put consumers and businesses at risk

Security hubris. It’s the phrase we use to refer to our feeling of confidence grounded on assumptions we all have but may not be aware of or care to admit about cybersecurity—and, at times, privacy. It rears its ugly head when 1 we share the common notion that programmers know how to code securel...

The top six takeaways for user privacy

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs began closing out our data privacy and cybersecurity law blog series, a two-month long exploration spanning five continents, 50 states, just as many data breach notification laws, three non-universal definitions of personal information and personal data, five pending ...

What to do when you discover a data breach

Your cell phone goes off in the middle of your well-deserved sleep and you try to find it before your partner wakes up as well. “What could be wrong? Why would they page me in the middle of the night?” More asleep than awake, you stumble down the stairs and call the number on the screen, which yo...

A week in security (April 29 – May 5)

Last week on Labs we discussed the possible exit scam of dark net market Wall Street Market, how the Electrum DDoS botnet reaches 152,000 infected hosts, we looked at the sophisticated threats plague ailing healthcare industry, a mysterious database that exposed personal information of 80 million...

The top six takeaways for corporate data privacy compliance

For nearly two months, Malwarebytes Labs has led readers on a journey through data privacy laws around the world, exploring the nuances between “personal information” and “personal data,” as well as between data breach notification laws in Florida, Utah, California, and Iowa. We explored the risk...

Cryptojacking in the post-Coinhive era

September 2017 is widely recognized as the month in which the phenomenon that became cryptojacking began. The idea that website owners could monetize their traffic by having visitors mine for cryptocurrencies in their browser was not new, but this time around it became mainstream, thanks to an...

Mozilla urges Apple to make privacy a team sport

We often say cybersecurity is a team sport, but, pending a public advocacy campaign from one major tech developer to another, the same might be true for online privacy. Mozilla is currently getting people around the world to lend their voices toward Apple, asking that the company place some extra...

Mysterious database exposed personal information of 80 million US households

Word has broken of yet another massive data trove exposed for anyone to see. A research team from vpnMentor discovered an exposed 24GB database hosted on a Microsoft cloud server containing the addresses, income levels, and marital statuses of users within 80 million US households. As we’ve seen...

Sophisticated threats plague ailing healthcare industry

The healthcare industry is no longer circling the drain, but it's still in critical condition. While many organizations in healthcare have aimed at or made positive strides toward a more robust cybersecurity and privacy posture, they still have a long way to go. In 2018, healthcare had the highes...

Electrum DDoS botnet reaches 152,000 infected hosts

By Jérôme Segura, Adam Thomas, and S!Ri We have been closely monitoring the situation involving the continued attacks against users of the popular Electrum Bitcoin wallet. Initially, victims were being tricked to download a fraudulent update that stole their cryptocurrencies. Later on, the threat...

Wall Street Market reported to have exit scammed

Around April 20, many users reported that Wall Street Market, a broadly known dark net market, had executed an exit scam, and that any pending orders were unlikely to be completed. Scamming with enterprises involving Bitcoin is not unheard of, and dark net markets with centralized escrow are...

A week in security (April 22 – 28)

Last week on Labs, we looked at security threats to headphones, privacy options in the world of law, and wandered through the FBI’s 2018 IC3 online crime report. We also explored another MageCart attack, and we released our 2019 Q1 Crime Tactics and Techniques report. Other cybersecurity news...

GitHub hosted Magecart skimmer used against hundreds of e-commerce sites

Every day, new e-commerce websites fall into the hands of one of the many Magecart skimmers. Unbeknownst to shoppers, criminals are harvesting their personal information, including payment details in the online equivalent of ATM card skimming. Most often the skimming code—written in JavaScript an...

Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques report finds businesses hit with 235 percent more threats in Q1

The Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques Q1 2019 report found businesses at the butt end of a bad joke. In just one year, threats aimed at corporate targets have increased by 235 percent, with Trojans, such as Emotet, and ransomware in particular revving up in the first quarter...

A look inside the FBI’s 2018 IC3 online crime report

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center have released their annual Crime Report, with the most recent release focusing on 2018. While the contents may not surprise, it definitely cements some of the bigger threats to consumers and businesses—and not all of them are particularly high tech...

Consumers have few legal options for protecting privacy

There are no promises in the words, “We care about user privacy.” Yet, these words appear on privacy policy after privacy policy, serving as disingenuous banners to hide potentially invasive corporate practices, including clandestine data collection, sharing, and selling. This is no accident. It ...

Of hoodies and headphones: a spotlight on risks surrounding audio output devices

More than a decade ago, cardiologists from the Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston presented their findings at the American Heart Association AHA Scientific Sessions 2008 about MP3 headphones causing disruptions with heart devices—such as the pacemaker and the implantable cardioverter...

A week in security (April 15 – 21)

Last week, Malwarebytes Labs revealed multiple giveaway online scam campaigns banking on the popularity and generosity of Ellen DeGeneres, weighed in on the hack that compromised legacy Microsoft email service accounts like Hotmail and MSN, explained what “like-farming” means and how to spot it o...