GDPR causes a flood of new policies

The European Union claims that the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR, which comes to term on May 25, is the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. Many companies have spent months preparing for the changes, working on policy and compliance, and introducing changes to...

A week in security (May 7 – May 13)

Last week on Labs, we looked at the case of a fake Android AV, an annoying adware that goes by the name of Kuik, the return of threat actors behind the Shopper Stop tech scam, a new Netflix phishing scam, the recent zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer, and the insufficiency of merely...

Where did the tech support scam blacklist go?

For about five years, we've maintained a blacklist of recognized tech support scammers, along with websites and phone numbers they might use to contact victims. The blacklist was part of our Tech support scams: help and resource page, which tells readers how scams work, what tricks to look out fo...

Internet Explorer zero-day: browser is once again under attack

Update 2018-05-25: CVE-2018-8174 has been added to the RIG exploit kit MDNC. Update 2018-05-22: Security researcher Richard Warren mentioned that a fully working IE zero-day now patched with payload was uploaded to VirusTotal. We decided to test Malwarebytes against it, since last time we only ha...

Parenting in the Digital World: a review

Before I became a new mum not so long ago, I did the best I could to prepare myself to take care of my little one by reading a lot books. From learning how to discern possible meanings behind baby's various cries to finding out what you can and can't feed your baby once they begin eating solids. ...

Netflix phish claims your membership is on hold

The days of ugly-looking phish pages hosted on something akin to a Geocities page are slowly receding into the distance. For quite some time now, phish attacks have made attempts to look fairly sophisticated and stand a decent chance of fooling anyone not keeping their guard up. Today, we have a...

HTTPS: why the green padlock is not enough

When goods get sold in large quantities, the price goes down. This might not be the first law of economics, but it’s applicable. An extrapolation of this is that if there are practically no production costs and no raw materials involved, prices of such goods will drop to zero. Usually, they will ...

Kuik: a simple yet annoying piece of adware

Some pieces of malware can be so simple—and yet such a pain to get rid of—especially when they start interfering with your system's configuration. This much is true for the Kuik adware program, which surprised us all by forcing affected machines to join a domain controller. The perpetrators are...

Tech support scam uses fake Shoppers Stop site to lure thousands

Update 2018-05-17: Shoppers Stop is a legitimate company based out of India and their brand was abused by scammers. These days, there are a lot of browser locker campaigns fueled by malvertising or redirection from hacked sites. But the Shoppers Stop tech scam campaign is actually a bit of both,...

Mobile Menace Monday: re-emergence of a fake Android AV

Back in early 2013, a new mobile antivirus AV company called Armor for Android emerged into the mobile security software industry that had everyone perplexed. It seemed eerily like malware known as a Fake AV, and some even gave it that label. As a younger mobile researcher, I was one of those who...

A week in security (April 30 – May 6)

Last week on Labs, we examined the Spartacus ransomware, reported about a new tactic used by the Necurs malspam campaign, informed you about the recommended Twitter password change, and discussed engaging students to start considering careers in cybersecurity. Other news NTML credentials can be...

Twitter security snafu: change your passwords

If you're logging into Twitter after having been AWOL for a day or two, you'll likely be seeing one of these pop-ups talking about account security: Click to enlarge Don't panic, it's nothing that can't be fixed. The message reads as follows: Keeping your account secure When you set a password fo...

Engaging students in cybersecurity: a primer for educators

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Maimonides The education sector has had its share of breaches. And schools, like medical and retail institutions, continue to struggle when it comes to securing their highly-priced assets: student a...

Internet Shortcut used in Necurs malspam campaign

The Necurs botnet continues to be one of the most prolific malicious spam distributors, with regular waves of carefully-crafted attachments that are used to download malware. The majority of malspam campaigns that we track are targeting Microsoft Office with documents containing either macros or...

SamSam ransomware: what you need to know

SamSam ransomware is a custom infection used in targeted attacks, often deployed using a wide range of exploits or brute-force tactics. Based on our own run-ins with the infection, we've observed that attacks were made on targets via vulnerable JBoss host servers during a previous wave of SamSam...

Spartacus ransomware: introduction to a strain of unsophisticated malware

Spartacus ransomware is a new sample that has been circulating in 2018. Written in C, the original sample is obfuscated, which we will go over as we extract it to its readable state. Spartacus is a relatively straight-forward ransomware sample and uses some similar techniques and code to others w...

A week in security (April 23 – April 29)

Last week, we dug into behavioral biometrics, explored a new crossrider variant, and embraced the power of "no." We also launched another CrackMe challenge, took a deep dive into smart toys, and finished up with a look at digital privacy in the age of IoT. Other news LinkedIn does battle with...

Please don’t buy this: smart toys

Smart toys attempt to offer what a lot of us imagined as kids—a toy that we can not only play with, but one that plays back. Many models offer voice recognition, facial expressions, hundreds of words and phrases, reaction to touch and impact, and even the ability to learn and retain new...

Malwarebytes CrackMe 2: try another challenge

Last November, we released the first edition of the Malwarebytes CrackMe. Encouraged by the positive response we received from the security community, we decided to repeat the game, hopefully making it even more interesting and entertaining. As before, the CrackMe is dedicated to malware analysts...

The Internet of Everything and digital privacy: what you need to know

If you don’t already own Internet of Things IoT devices, you likely will soon. IoT-enabled devices are physical gadgets with built-in Internet connectivity that allow data transmission; often this happens in the background with no indication to the user that anything is happening. The IoT is more...

Far Cry 5 download offers: embrace the power of “no”

The recently released Far Cry 5 is a video game where you reclaim Montana from a cult obsessed with the "power of yes" by hitting members over the head with a shovel. It's also one of the biggest sellers for publisher Ubisoft to date, and it stands to reason that many people would like to grab a...

New Crossrider variant installs configuration profiles on Macs

A new variant of the Crossrider adware has been spotted that is infecting Macs in a unique way. For the most part, this variant is still quite ordinary, doing some of the same old things that we've been seeing for years in Mac adware. However, the use of a configuration profile introduces a uniqu...

Securing financial data of the future: behavioral biometrics explained

Some of us would be pretty excited about a brave, new passwordless world. Gone would be the days of having to write down 27 passwords and post them beside monitor screens. Or having to yell them out loud to a colleague on the other side of the room. For banks and other financial institutions, a...

A week in security (April 16 – April 22)

Last week, we took a stroll down memory lane talking about Facebook and MySpace, noticed a change in the Magnitude exploit kit—wherein it started adopting the GandCrab ransomware, took a good look at a new form of adware that is based on Python, chatted a bit about Russian hacking with a...

Cloudflare’s new DNS service

Are you looking for a free way to speed up your internet and gain some extra privacy in the process? Keep reading, because Cloudflare the Web Performance & Security Company is offering a free new DNS service. And it helped me improve the speed of my DNS lookups. What is DNS? DNS is short for Doma...

Perspectives on Russian hacking

Russia is an endlessly fascinating subject both in and around infosec. Recent years have shifted attention away from pure malware capabilities, to psyops, social engineering, and an endless slew of mind games designed to destabilize and keep nations ever-so-slightly off balance. Security firms in...

PBot: a Python-based adware

Recently, we came across a Python-based sample dropped by an exploit kit. Although it arrives under the disguise of a MinerBlocker, it has nothing in common with miners. In fact, it seems to be PBot/PythonBot: a Python-based adware. Apart from a couple of posts on forums in Russian language and...

Magnitude exploit kit switches to GandCrab ransomware

The GandCrab ransomware is reaching far and wide via malspam, social engineering schemes, and exploit kit campaigns. On April 16, we discovered that Magnitude EK, which had been loyal to its own Magniber ransomware, was now being leveraged to push out GandCrab, too. While Magnitude EK remains...

5 cybersecurity questions retailers must ask to protect their businesses

The Target breach in 2013 may not be the biggest retail breach in history, but for many retailers, it was their watershed moment. Point-of-sale PoS terminals were compromised for more than two weeks. 40 million card details and 70 million records of personal information swiped—part of which was...

Myspace vs. Facebook: the good old days?

Many people have fond memories of ye olde Myspace dotte comme, and those rose-splashed spectacles seem to have grown ever larger in light of the recent Facebook happenings. In recent days, I've seen many declaring their love for all things Tom, and how everything was just one huge barrel of laugh...

A week in security (April 09 – April 15)

Last week, we took a look at a malware-campaign called FakeUpdates, methods to use secure instant messaging, the inner workings of a decryption tool, and some Facebook spam campaigns. We also published our first quarterly Malwarebytes Labs CTNT report of 2018. Other news A security researcher...

Facebook spammers making things worse

Facebook's having a bad couple of weeks. Between Congressional testimony and new information coming forward about Cambridge Analytica's use of user data, the tech giant is having problems keeping its users aboard. Unfortunately, misery loves company. We noticed a few Facebook spam campaigns this...

Encryption 101: decryption tool code walkthrough

We have reached the final installment of our Encryption 101 series. In the prior post, we walked through, in detail, the thought process while looking at the Princess Locker ransomware. We talked about the specific ways to narrow down the analysis toward the encryption portions, the weaknesses in...

Keeping your business and personal instant messages secure

Most people want to know their instant messages are securely wrapped up—whether that's for personal privacy or making sure online scammers can't grab the message content. If you're sending text on a sensitive topic, or perhaps some photo attachments intended for one person only, you definitely...

‘FakeUpdates’ campaign leverages multiple website platforms

A malware campaign which seems to have started at least since December 2017 has been gaining steam by enrolling a growing number of legitimate but compromised websites. Its modus operandi relies on social engineering users with fake but convincing update notifications. Similar techniques were use...

A week in security (April 02 – April 08)

Last week, we took a look at fake Whatsapp antics, dubious gaming extensions, and a huge Panera bread breach. There was also LockCrypt ransomware to contend with, we had a poke around Linkedin, and we published another Physician, protect thyself blog. Other news Compromised cash register systems...

Labs CTNT report shows shift in threat landscape to cryptomining

It's that time again! Time for the quarterly Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques report aka the Labs CTNT report. To get a more complete picture of what's been going on in cybercrime this quarter, the Labs team has combined intel and statistics gathered from January through March...

Physician, protect thyself: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

In part one of our Physician, protect thyself series, we recognized significant security problems within the healthcare industry that need addressing. Health organizations moving from the paper to the 'puter—a shift meant to improve care and overall patient experience—inadvertently introduced...

Maybe you shouldn’t use LinkedIn

UPDATE: 4/6/2018 LinkedIn reached out for comment on the article, and we'd like to clarify our position based on their concerns. They wrote: Members control their connections, who can see them including keeping them private if they wish and only first degree connections can get access to your...

LockCrypt ransomware: weakness in code can lead to recovery

At the start of the year, it seemed that 2018 was going to be all about cryptominers. They so overwhelmingly dominated the landscape that it looked like no other threat had a chance. However, ransomware is not giving up the field so fast. There have been new variants popping up every couple of...

Panerabread.com breach could have impacted millions

Customers who signed up for a Panerabread.com account in order to order fast-casual baked goods may want to guard their dough. Security researcher Brian Krebs reported yesterday that the website for the bakery chain leaked millions of customer records, including names, emails, physical addresses,...

Malicious gaming extensions: a child’s play to infection

Did you ever lend your laptop to a child to play a video game, only to get it back filled with advertisements? Our CEO knows a little bit about that predicament, having unknowingly infected his parents' computer when he was a kid. But times have changed since then. Let us play for you a modern-da...

Mobile Menace Monday: Fake WhatsApp can steal info from your phone

Last month, a blogger at My Online Security reported receiving a spam comment containing WhatsApp Plus. Going through the process, they downloaded an APK of this so-called WhatsApp Plus. Where they ended was as stated, I am not certain exactly what this does, but from the sandbox reports it looks...

A week in security (March 26 – April 01)

Last week, we looked at the thought process behind creating a ransomware decryptor, the inner workings of QuantLoader, the ways one can protect their Android devices, the exploit kits we have encountered this winter, the now-known epidemic of data breaches, the coming of TLS 1.3, and the ways one...

You down with P2P? 10 tips to secure your mobile payment app

If you look at the figures, you cannot deny that the eCommerce industry is steadily growing. More and more people are doing their shopping online, not only for products and services geared toward the use of technologies and the Internet, but also for items previously only found in brick and morta...

TLS 1.3 is nearly here

TLS stands for "Transport Layer Security" and it's rather important. Why's that? Oh, I'm glad you asked. Here's me, yelling my password across the office to you: "PASSWORD!!!" You heard me loud and clear, right? But so did basically anyone else nearby. Now let's work in a little TLS love and...

The data breach epidemic: no info is safe

By now it’s obvious that data security technology and protocols haven’t kept pace with the needs of consumers. Even as more people trust their most sensitive personal information to online apps and services, databases are routinely exposed. In 2017 alone, we learned about massive data breaches fr...

Exploit kits: Winter 2018 review

In the past, we used to do a blog series on exploit kits where we would periodically check in on the main players in the market. In March 2017, we wrote the Winter 2017 review, before exploit kit activity dropped down to a whisper. We've since discontinued our blog series, for lack of development...

An in-depth malware analysis of QuantLoader

This guest post is written by Vishal Thakur, CSIRT/Salesforce. For more on Vishal, read his bio at the end of the blog. QuantLoader is a Trojan downloader that has been available for sale on underground forums for quite some time now. It has been used in campaigns serving a range of malware,...

10 ways to protect your Android phone

Android has been around for nearly a decade and has come a long way from its early wannabe iPhone days. New features, upgraded camera phones, a wide variety of apps and platforms, and polished interface design have led to a huge install base—a whopping 2 billion+ monthly active devices—making it...