Encryption 101: Decryptor’s thought process

In the previous parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, we covered the basics of encryption, walked through a live example of a ransomware in detail, and talked about encryption weaknesses. In this part of the encryption 101 series, we will begin wrapping it up by going into detail on a ransomware with...

A week in security (March 19 – March 25)

Last week, we looked at the growing problem of smartphone addiction, how link rot is continually slicing down portions of the web, and the theft of our intellectual property. We also explored the landscape of DDoS problems, and tackled a Stephen Hawking 419 scam. Other news What can only really b...

What Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problem means for your data

As you may already know, there's been a security meltdown at Facebook, thanks to a company called Cambridge Analytica and Donald Trump. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists it wasn't a breach, which is technically true. But that doesn't change the fact that the data of 50 million users was obtain...

Malicious cryptomining and the blacklist conundrum

When Coinhive first came out in September of 2017, it was fairly easy to identify websites using browser miners by looking for a few lines referencing the Coinhive API within the HTML source code. Because this was a new phenomenon, even bad actors didn't have to hide their intentions, and...

“Celebrating Stephen Hawking” with a 419 scam

The recently departed Stephen Hawking is apparently back from the dead, now a target for scammers wanting to extract some quick cash from the unwary in the form of a vaguely surreal 419 scam. The whole thing begins with an email from, er, Stephen Hawking titled "Celebrating Stephen Hawking." Clic...

DDoS attacks are growing: What can businesses do?

Depending on the type and size of your organization, a DDoS Distributed Denial of Service attack can be anything from a small nuisance to something that can break your revenue stream and damage it permanently. A DDoS attack can cripple some online businesses for a period of time long enough to se...

CyberByte steals Malwarebytes’ intellectual property

At Malwarebytes, we frequently examine apps for detection as Potentially Unwanted Programs PUPs. These are programs that exhibit a wide variety of bad behaviors, but aren't actually outright malware. Unfortunately, there are many supposed antivirus programs that fit this category. Following user...

The digital entropy of death: link rot

Hot on the heels of a grim blog about digital death comes…another blog about digital death. Except in this case, the recently deceased would be the links that tie the web together, otherwise known as link rot. Link rot is a weird thing. Say I blog for Puppy Chow and I write an article about the...

Investors concerned about smartphone addiction; Apple responds with new webpage

Hot on the heels of an open letter from investors urging Apple to do more to protect children from smartphone addiction, the tech giant has recently dedicated a page on their website to families. The "Families" page, which can be accessed at apple.com/families, contains tools parents can use to s...

A week in security (March 12 – March 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a look at the inner workings of a fileless attack, explored what happened in a zero day ransomware attack aimed at South Koreans, gave you hints and tips for avoiding cold calls, and took a deep dive into the secretive world of GrayKey. Other news The Equif...

A cure for the common cold call: freeze them out

The phone rings and it's a number I don’t recognize. That’s enough to bring my mood down a few degrees. It shouldn’t, but unfortunately experience has taught me that at least 95 percent of the calls from numbers that are “private” or that I don’t have an account name stored for on my phone are...

GrayKey iPhone unlocker poses serious security concerns

Ever since the case of the San Bernadino shooter pitted Apple against the FBI over the unlocking of an iPhone, opinions have been split on providing backdoor access to the iPhone for law enforcement. Some felt that Apple was aiding and abetting a felony by refusing to create a special version of...

Hermes ransomware distributed to South Koreans via recent Flash zero-day

This blog post was authored by @hasherezade, Jérôme Segura and Vasilios Hioureas. At the end of January, the South Korean Emergency Response Team KrCERT published news of a Flash Player zero-day used in targeted attacks. The flaw, which exists in Flash Player 28.0.0.137 and below, was distributed...

Hancitor: fileless attack with a DLL copy trick

This article was authored by David Sánchez, Mickaël Roger, and Jérôme Segura During the past few years, malicious spam campaigns have proven to be one of the most efficient infection vectors, in part due to a combination of social engineering and a regular number of Office vulnerabilities. The...

A week in security (March 05 – March 11)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we paid homage to several women in tech, including some of our very own, on International Women's Day and shared their stories. We also looked into an adware posing as an Android app that claims to live stream the 2018 Winter Olympics, exposed scammers that go by t...

The digital entropy of death: what happens to your online accounts when you die

Unless you're planning on having your mind jammed inside some sort of computer chip, eventually mortality will catch up and you're going to have to work out what you'll do with all of your online accounts. When it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil, you might, theoretically, be slightly annoy...

Tech support scammers GeeksHelp caught again, two years later

Many researchers have noted an increase in tech support scam activity during the past few months. This trend, facilitated by browser lockers, is not surprising considering that other web-based infection methods are not as effective. While people are still receiving cold calls from alleged Microso...

How artificial intelligence and machine learning will impact cybersecurity

Artificial intelligence AI and machine learning ML are hot topics in technology. New use cases and applications are discussed daily—from search results recommendations to smart cars. But what are cybersecurity organizations doing with this tech? What does it take to render additional security out...

International Women’s Day: Women in tech share their stories

From the metoo movement to Oprah's Time's Up speech to the women's marches on cities throughout the world—it's been a banner year for women's rights. And on this International Women's Day, we wanted to do more than pay lip service to the changes in feminist dialogue. After all, tech is an industr...

The state of Mac malware

Mac users are often told that they don't need antivirus software, because there are no Mac viruses. However, this is not true at all, as Macs actually are affected by malware, and have been for most of their existence. Even the first well-known virus—Elk Cloner—affected Apple computers rather tha...

Building an incident response program: creating the framework

In part one of our series, our overview of Building an incident response plan, we discussed what regulations organizations will need to meet in order to address incident/breach response protocols laid out in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR. This week, we’ll talk to you about step...

Encryption 101: How to break encryption

Continuing on in our Encryption 101 series, where we gave a malware analyst's primer on encryption and demonstrated encryption techniques using ShiOne ransomware, we now look at what it takes to break an encryption. In order for something as powerful as encryption to break, there needs to be some...

Mobile Menace Monday: Olympics app has more ads than games

An app claiming to live stream the 2018 Winter Olympics but really serving up a blizzard of ads had a short run on Google Play. It was uploaded to the Play store on February 8, 2018. Since then, it's been removed. The last known existence of it on the store was a cached snapshot from February 10...

Week in security (February 26 – March 4)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we explained how to protect your computer from malicious cryptomining, we gave an encryption 101 lesson using ShiOne ransomware as a case study, and we offered an explanation about SQL injection. We also released a report on the state of malicious cryptomining from...

Massive DDoS attack washes over GitHub

There's been some huge DDoS distributed denial of service attacks over the years, but we've been…lucky?…enough to witness the latest raising of the stakes in the last couple of days. GitHub, an incredibly important code resource for major organisations around the world, fell victim to a colossal...

Explained: SQL injection

Even though SQL injection is a type of attack that is relatively easy to prevent, it is one of the most common web hacking techniques. So, what’s it all about? The basics SQL is short for Structured Query Language and usually pronounced as “sequel.” SQL is a standard language used to query and...

Blast from the past: stowaway Virut delivered with Chinese DDoS bot

Recently, we described an unusual Chinese drive-by attack that was delivering a variant of the Avzhan DDoS bot. The attack also contained multiple components that were not-so-new. Among the exploits, the newest was from 2016. Avzhan is also not a recent malware—the compilation timestamp of the...

RIG malvertising campaign uses cryptocurrency theme as decoy

For a couple of weeks, we have been observing a malvertising campaign that uses decoy websites to redirect users to the RIG exploit kit. Those sites, whose theme is about cryptocurrencies, were all registered recently and are swapped after a few days of use. The initial redirection starts off fro...

Encryption 101: ShiOne ransomware case study

In part one of this series, Encryption 101: a malware analyst's primer, we introduced some of the basic encryption concepts used in malware. If you haven't read it, we suggest going back for a review, as it's necessary in order to be able to fully follow part two, our case study. In this study, w...

Human Factor Podcast: Jenny Radcliffe and Chris Boyd

A little while ago, I was invited to take part in Jenny Radcliffe's Human Factor Podcast. With 44 episodes strong and counting!, Jenny spends an hour or so talking at length with her guests who are professional investigators, security advocates, all-round educators, tireless consultant/conference...

How to protect your computer from malicious cryptomining

Noticing that your computer is running slow? While sometimes a telltale sign of infection, these days that seems doubly true. And the reason is: malicious cryptomining. So, what, exactly, is it? We'll tell you how bad this latest malware phenomenon is for you and your computer, plus what you can ...

A week in security (February 19 – February 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we gave readers a primer on encryption, took a stab at that Deepfakes tool Internet users seem to be interested in, and started a new series that talks about GDPR. We also looked at a drive-by download campaign that starts in booby-trapped Chinese websites that dro...

The state of malicious cryptomining

While cryptocurrencies have been around for a long time and used for legitimate purposes, online criminals have certainly tarnished their reputation. Unfortunately, the same benefits offered by these decentralized and somewhat anonymous digital currencies were quickly abused to extort money, as w...

Avzhan DDoS bot dropped by Chinese drive-by attack

The Avzhan DDoS bot has been known since 2010, but recently we saw it in wild again, being dropped by a Chinese drive-by attack. In this post, we'll take a deep dive into its functionality and compare the sample we captured with the one described in the past. Analyzed sample...

Deepfakes FakeApp tool (briefly) includes cryptominer

A few weeks ago, we took a look at a forum dedicated to Deepfake clips where the site was pushing Coinhive mining scripts in the website's HTML code. As it turns out, there's been another mining blow-out in the form of one of the apps used to make the fakes. That's right—a tool designed to push...

Drive-by download campaign targets Chinese websites, experiments with exploits

During our web crawls we sometimes come across bizarre findings or patterns we haven't seen before. This was the case with a particular drive-by download attack planted on Chinese websites. While by no means advanced it turned out to be fairly buggy, we witnessed a threat actor experimenting with...

How to build an incident response program: GDPR guidelines

In today’s computing world, it is not a matter of “if” an organization will get compromised, but “when.” That’s why, in addition to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR going into effect this May, many organizations need to have a robust incident response program to ensure...

Encryption 101: a malware analyst’s primer

While most in the security industry know what encryption is, many lack a basic understanding of how it is used in malware—especially ransomware. Because of this, we thought it would be beneficial to do an introductory primer on encryption mechanisms and how they are exploited for malicious...

A week in security (February 12 – February 18)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we looked at a huge Android cryptomining campaign, malicious apps on Google Play, and some Apple scams doing the rounds. We also explored the world of healthcare security, and dived into the land of scammy Valentine's Day tricks and cheats. Other news Thought the...

Physician, protect thyself: healthcare cybersecurity circling the drain

No one knows you better than you do. But thanks to technology advances and the continued digitization of healthcare data accumulation and sharing processes, we can also honestly say the same about your healthcare provider. Indeed, every time we get in touch with a health professional, data is...

Online security tips for Valentine’s Day: how to beat the cheats

Valentine's Day is upon us once more, and so are lots of dating-friendly security tips. Read on and secure your profile, alongside one hopes the love of your life. 1. Not so hot singles in your area Many dating apps have geotagging enabled, regardless of whether you created your profile on a...

Panic attack: Apple scams apply pressure

We've seen a number of Apple-related phishes in circulation over the last few days. While most of them already lead to deactivated phishing sites, we thought it was worth highlighting some of the tricks being used to bait people into handing over payment details at the moment. Fake receipt emails...

Kotlin-based malicious apps penetrate Google market

An open-source programming language, Kotlin is a fully-supported official programming language for Android. Google boasts that Kotlin contains safety features in order to make apps "healthy by default." Many apps are already built with Kotlin, from the hottest startups to Fortune 500 companies...

A week in security (February 5 – February 11)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we featured a new Flash Player zero-day that has been found in recent targeted attacks. And we talked about a new trick to cripple browsers that came out of the hat of tech support scammers. We also covered several methods of stealing cryptocurrencies, including on...

Drive-by cryptomining campaign targets millions of Android users

Malvertising and online fraud through forced redirects and Trojanized apps—to cite the two most common examples—are increasingly plaguing Android users. In many cases, this is made worse by the fact that people often don't use web filtering or security applications on their mobile devices. A...

Bank robbers 2.0: digital thievery and stolen cryptocoins

Imagine running down the street and away from law enforcement with 2,000 pounds of gold bars. Or 1,450 pounds in $100 bills. With both of these physical currencies amounting to roughly US$64 million, you'd be making quite a steal…if you could get away with it. That's exactly what the next...

New Deepfakes forum goes mining with Coinhive

You may or may be familiar with the furore over Deepfakes, a relatively new development in pornography involving a tool called FacesApp, which is capable of producing a real porn clip that replaces the original actors' heads with those of celebrities—or indeed, anyone at all. Online fakes have be...

Bogus hack apps hack users back for cryptocash

Recently, we discovered a gold…er…APK mine of fake hacking apps. The "legitimate" versions of hack apps are intended to hack other apps in order to get something for free. Although it’s unclear what exactly these fake apps claim to hack, the real hack job is done to unsuspecting users. Search and...

New Mac cryptominer has 23 older variants

On February 1, a new Mac cryptominer was discovered being distributed via a hack of the MacUpdate website. Since then, we've been doing some digging and found that this isolated incident was just the tip of the iceberg. The malware delivered by the MacUpdate hack appears to be the culmination of...

Safer Internet Day 2018: ad blockers and anti-trackers

The path to a safer Internet can be a bit of a quandary. What programs should you buy? How long should your passwords be? Is it okay to write them down? What makes a website secure? All of these questions can merit their own lengthy essays, so today, on Safer Internet Day, we’re going to look at...