IT NEWS

The Justice Department today announced a complaint filed in the District of Kansas to forfeit cryptocurrency paid as ransom to North Korean hackers or otherwise used to launder such ransom payments. The seized funds amounting to half a million US dollars, include ransoms paid by health care providers in Kansas and Colorado.

Maui ransomware

Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said at the International Conference on Cyber Security:

“Thanks to rapid reporting and cooperation from a victim, the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors have disrupted the activities of a North Korean state-sponsored group deploying ransomware known as ‘Maui.’”

Malwarebytes recently reported on the North Korean APT that targets US healthcare sector with Maui ransomware. The FBI started responding to incidents involving Maui in May 2021. Unlike the ransomware we usually see that plagues organizations and regularly hits the news, Maui is never sold or offered to affiliates as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) tool. It is, instead, developed and used privately for state-backed actors.

New at the time

According to court documents, in May 2021, North Korean hackers used a ransomware strain called Ransom.Maui to encrypt the files and servers of a medical center in the District of Kansas. After more than a week of being unable to access encrypted servers, the Kansas hospital paid approximately $100,000 in Bitcoin to regain the use of its computers and equipment. Because the Kansas medical center notified the FBI and cooperated with law enforcement, the FBI was able to identify the never-before-seen North Korean ransomware and trace the cryptocurrency to China-based money launderers.

Follow the money

In April 2022, the FBI observed a payment of approximately $120,000 in Bitcoin into one of the seized cryptocurrency accounts identified thanks to the cooperation of the Kansas hospital. The following investigation confirmed that a medical provider in Colorado had just paid a ransom after being hacked by actors using the same Maui ransomware strain. In May 2022, the FBI seized the contents of two cryptocurrency accounts that had received funds from the Kansas and Colorado health care providers. The District of Kansas then began proceedings to forfeit the hackers’ funds and return the stolen money to the victims.

Not the first time

We’ve seen ransomware recoveries in the past and we hope to see many more in the future. The most well known and probably one of the first was when the US Department of Justice recovered much of the ransomware payment that Colonial Pipeline paid to free itself from the attack that derailed the oil and gas supplier’s operations for several days.

Another example: The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands was hit by ransomware in December 2019 and paid a ransom of 197,000 Euro in Bitcoin. A part of this ransom was recovered in 2020 from a laundering operation in Ukraine. Due to the difference in Bitcoin prices, the University received a return payment of 500,000 Euro. The “profit” will be donated to disadvantaged students.

Mitigation

Even though ransom recovery is a good thing, it only happens on rare occasions and the general advice is to refrain from paying ransoms. It doesn’t guarantee you will get your data back, nor does it free you from recovery costs (because you still have to harden your system against the next attack), and it marks you as a target for repeat attacks.

Although Maui may be a little different from run-of-the-mill ransomware, the steps to protect against it are not:

• Maintain offsite, offline backups of data and test them regularly.
• Create a cybersecurity response plan.
• Keep operating systems, applications, and firmware up to date.
• Disable or harden remote desktop protocol (RDP).
• Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for as many services as possible.
• Require administrator credentials to install software.
• Report ransomware incidents to your local FBI field office.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Another ransomware payment recovered by the Justice Department appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Fraudsters have long been leveraging the shady corners of the internet to place malicious adverts, leading users to various scams. However, every now and again we see a campaign that goes mainstream and targets some of the world’s top brands.

Case in point, we recently uncovered a malvertising chain abusing Google’s ad network to redirect visitors to an infrastructure of tech support scams. Unsuspecting users searching for popular keywords will click an advert and their browser will get hijacked with fake warnings urging them to call rogue Microsoft agents for support.

What makes this campaign stand out is the fact that it exploits a very common search behavior when it comes to navigating the web: looking up a website by name instead of entering its full URL in the address bar.

Hijacking traffic from on a specific user flow

The threat actors are abusing Google’s ad network by purchasing ad space for popular keywords and their associated typos. A common human behavior is to open up a browser and do a quick search to get to the website you want without entering its full URL. Typically a user will (blindly) click on the first link returned (whether it is an ad or an organic search result).

Let’s say you want to load YouTube and type ‘youtube’ instead of entering the full address ‘youtube.com’ in the browser’s address bar. The first result that appears shows ‘www.youtube.com’ so you are likely to trust it and click on it:

Hijacking traffic in such a way is a clever and likely profitable scheme outlining some of the issues and abuses associated with the placement of ads versus organic search results.

The top searches we have seen for malware-laden ads in this campaign are:

• youtube
• facebook
• amazon
• walmart

Victims were simply trying to visit those websites and relied on Google Search to take them there. Instead, they ended up with an annoying browser hijack trying to scam them.

Cloaking and other violations

The technique used to divert traffic for malicious purposes is known as cloaking and is based on two prerequisites:

• User looks fake (non residential IP address, wrong user-agent string or simply a crawler)
  • A redirect to the requested website will take place
• User looks legitimate
  • A redirect to a different site and different content happens

As per Google, “Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.” Again, based on Google’s policy violation a buyer that uses a creative (ad) containing malware can be suspended for a minimum of three months.

Traffic and redirects

There is a short chain of redirects leading to the browser locker. In this section we will take apart another malicious ad for Facebook this time. The ad is of course quite misleading as there is nothing that indicates that clicking on it would redirect anywhere else but to the requested website. Note how it appears before the top organic search result, guaranteeing a higher click rate.

The redirection mechanism is engineered in such a way that static analysis of the HTML code is difficult and does not give away the browser locker URL easily.

First redirect

This page determines whether to load decoy content (in this case the legitimate Facebook website) or a secondary script on the same attacker-controlled infrastructure.

Second redirect

This is where the browser locker URL is found and we can see that the threat actors don’t actually want to make a formal redirect but instead are loading it within an iframe.

When the page is rendered, the main address bar still shows the .com (cloaking domain) while the content is actually loaded from an iframe (100% width and height) from a disposable CloudFront URL.

Multiple cloud platforms affected

Below are examples of malvertising chains we have observed using slightly different variations but that we believe are related to the same threat actor. They used a clever approach by adopting different flows for the cloaking and browser locker such that detecting and taking down one would not impact the overall campaign.

Specifically, we see the threat actor using more expensive domains mixed with disposable domains on shady TLDs. For infrastructure, again they diversified between paid VPS on hosting companies and free cloud providers (PaaS).

Traffic flow – case 1 : throwaway domains

1. Google search: google.com/search?q=walmart&{…}
2. DoubleClick ad network: ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/{…}
3. Cloaking domain: ssgvbcxcc[.]ga/?url=https://www.walmart.com/ip/{…}
4. Browser locker: prolesscodenet856[.]ml/erxczzxEr0rgdxvngEr0hjhvhhxEr0cbchk0252infoyxZdzc

Traffic flow – case 2: IP address

1. Google search: google.com/search?q=walmart&{…}
2. Ad platform: clickserve.dartsearch.net/link/click?_v={…}
3. Cloaking domain: gettouy[.]org/t2/?url=https://www.walmart.com/ip/{…}
4. Browser locker: 159.203.183[.]136/windowsecurity/

Traffic flow – case 3: Digital Ocean PaaS

1. Google search: google.com/search?q=facebook&{…}
2. Ad platform: clickserve.dartsearch.net/link/click?_v={…}
3. Cloaking domain: playcrpm[.]com/?url=https://www.facebook.com/f{…}
4. Browser locker: starfish-app-irxap.ondigitalocean[.]app/{…}&number=1-866-896-0189{…}

Traffic flow – case 4: Azure cloud

1. Google search: google.com/search?q=zillow&{…}
2. Ad platform: clickserve.dartsearch.net/link/click?_v={…}
3. Cloaking domain: vlt[.]me/.2zqd4/?url=https://www.zillow.com/?url={…}
4. Browser locker: wdq23r2fdadqwdqwdfwedadasasd.azurewebsites[.]net/fC0deJdfd008f0d0CH888Err0r80dBG88/index.html

Reporting and protection

As far as we can tell, these different campaigns have been going on for several weeks already. Although we don’t have statistics to figure out how many people were exposed, we can infer that the number was high based on a couple of factors:

• The ads target popular keywords (which also indicates that the threat actors are not opposed to paying a premium)
• We were able to replay the malvertising chains in our lab multiple times (live replays of malvertising on high profile sites is usually difficult)

We reported the malicious ads and flagged them under the “An ad/listing violates other Google Ads policies” category.

We also shared and are currently sharing the cloaking domains infrastructure with relevant parties. The browlock domains themselves have such a short lifespan that it is practically useless to act upon them.

Meanwhile, Malwarebytes users were already protected against this campaign thanks to our heuristic detection of the browser locker pages that force a fullscreen and auto play an audio warning.

Indicators of Compromise

eauxedrill[.]com
shopmealy[.]com
aeowqpeqwpa924[.]ga
ejdcvvdhsjdj[.]ml
feopqwoeqw245[.]ga
iowqepwoqe425[.]ga
rasteringfileweb539[.]ga
rsgdkffvsjkoavd[.]ml
ssgvbcxcc[.]ga
gettouy[.]org
getcdprm[.]org
playcrpm[.]com
monhomedecore[.]com
allnewz[.]site
vlt[.]me
youtubelinktrack[.]live
morth[.]buzz
abhihomeabh[.]com
kalarahulshet[.]com
tevarsingh[.]com
bhtl[.]digital
cduitiek[.]tk

The post Google ads lead to major malvertising campaign appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Ring, the Amazon-owned company behind the popular smart doorbells, has admitted to giving doorbell data to law enforcement willy-nilly. All they have to do is fill out a form called the Amazon Law Enforcement Request Tracker—no need to ask for the data owner’s consent, give a warrant or court order. The company revealed this in response to a letter Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent Amazon in June 2022.

Senator Markey’s letter contains a request for updates regarding the steps Ring has taken “to remove private policing agencies from its Neighbors Public Safety Service (NPSS), reduce the potential for its products to be misused in harmful ways, and protect individuals’ right to privacy.” The NPSS is a means for public safety agencies, which include law enforcement, to connect with their local communities that can publicly share posts or video recordings to the Neighbors App feed.

Amazon responded in writing to Senator Markey’s letter, but the response was only revealed to the public recently. Below are some takeaway points from the response:

• Ring refuses to change the default setting of automatically recording audio when recording videos via its doorbell camera.
• Ring currently doesn’t have a voice recognition feature. But that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.
• There are currently 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments on the NPSS platform.
• Ring generally doesn’t allow private security companies on NPSS, and it will only onboard such companies “if they are peace officers under state law and subject to constitutional restrictions.”
• Ring affirms its right to respond immediately to law enforcement requests under emergency circumstances involving imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. At times like these, it says, it will share details without asking for consent. And it has done so in 11 incidents this year.

Brendan Daley, Ring’s spokesperson, told Politico that although Ring doesn’t need user consent when handing footage to law enforcement with warrants, it does notify the owners of the video footages.

Speaking with Ars Technica, Policy Analyst for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Matthew Guariglia said, “There are always going to be situations in which it might be expedient for public safety to be able to get around some of the usual infrastructure and be able to get footage very quickly.”

But the problem is that the people who are deciding what constitutes exigent circumstances and what constitutes the type of emergency, all of these very important safeguards, are Ring and the police, both of whom, as far as I know, don’t have a great reputation when it comes to deciding when it’s appropriate to acquire a person’s data.

~ Matthew Guariglia, EFF

The Policing Project at New York University (NYU) School of Law recently concluded its two year audit of Ring to improve its products and services, focusing on NPSS. Ring admitted to making more than 100 changes to its products, policies, and legal practices. This includes the introduction of Requests for Assistance, which ensures transparency on the part of public safety agencies when asking for assistance from communities in the form of information or video as part of ongoing investigations. The company deliberately created Requests for Assistance to keep control of owners’ hands, not the requesting agencies.

When it comes to sharing private data, both the NYU and Guariglia have landed on the same conclusion: Policymakers need to lay more ground rules on how much private surveillance data police can rely on.

The post Ring shares data with police without consent (but it’s in good faith), says Amazon appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

WordPress admins are being warned to remove a buggy plugin or risk a total site takeover.

This particular threat relates to a plugin which is no longer in use: Modern WPBakery page builder addons. The vulnerability in the plugin, known as CVE-2021-24284, allows “unauthenticated arbitrary file upload via the ‘uploadFontIcon’ AJAX action”. This means that attackers could upload rogue PHP files to the WordPress site, leading to remote code execution and a complete site takeover.

There’s been a sudden increase in attacks related to this abandoned WordPress relic. In 2021, researchers discovered “several vulnerable endpoints” which could lead to injection of malicious JavaScript or even deletion of arbitrary files in Modern WPBakery. This time around, the aim of the game is to once again upload rogue PHP files then inject malicious JavaScript into the site.

Roughly 1.6 million sites have been scanned to check for the plugin’s presence by bad actors, and current estimates suggest somewhere in the region of 4,000 to 8,000 websites are still playing host to the plugin.

Check and remove ASAP

The current advice is to check for the plugin, and then remove it as soon as you possibly can. It’s been completely abandoned, and no security-related fixes will be forthcoming.

If you have it installed, you’re on your own, and it’s likely only a matter of time before the exploiters make their way to your Modern WPBakery hosting website and start getting up to mischief.

Do yourself and your site visitors a favour: Remove this outdated invitation to site-wide compromise as soon as you possibly can.

The post Warning for WordPress admins: uninstall the Modern WPBakery plugin immediately! appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A new phishing campaign targeting PayPal users aims to get extensive data from potential victims. The data it’s after includes government documents like passport, as well as selfie photos. In a nutshell, it’s an extensive form of information theft, the likes of which could result in someone’s identity being fully stolen and their financial and other online accounts being taken over.

PayPal phishing sites are a dime a dozen due to the number of people and companies using it as another form of payment method. However, what’s notable about this campaign is that all the phishing pages are hosted on legitimate WordPress sites.

Hundreds—if not thousands—of WordPress sites remain vulnerable and easily exploited by scammers because of their poor security and the use of weak passwords. This was evident after Akamai found an attacker had planted a phishing kit on its WordPress honeypot.

After successfully brute-forcing their way into the WordPress site using a list of common credentials, the attackers then installed a file manager plugin that let them upload the phishing kit to the compromised site.

To avoid detection, the phishing kit cross-referenced IP addresses to domains belonging to companies it wants to avoid. Naturally, some of these domains include those belonging to cybersecurity organizations.

Blending into the background

Akamai researchers also noticed how the scammers made an effort to make their phishing page as indistinguishable as possible from the legitimate one. For one thing, the actors used .htaccess (short for hypertext access), a file that allows an admin to modify how a URL destination appears on the address bar.

In this case, the scammers wanted their phishing URL to make it look like it wasn’t a PHP file, so they edited out the “.php” bit of the URL. This makes sense because PayPal’s sign-in page doesn’t have an extension.

Oddly enough, the phish starts off asking users to type in the alphanumeric string they see on the “Security Challenge” page, under the guise of a means to verify that the user isn’t a bot.

The next page then asks for the user’s PayPal credentials. Normally, phishing kits would stop here, and the scammers would leave content with the PayPal credentials they can then misuse and abuse.

But not here. In this case they want more. This is just the start of a sophisticated work-up to get users to provide such sensitive information without them realizing it.

After users provide their PayPal credentials, they are then presented with a notice of “unusual activity” in the next screen.

Once users click the “Secure My Account” button, they are then directed to a page telling them to confirm all their card details. Here, Akamai noted that a ZIP code and CVV are normally sufficient.

Next, the scammers then ask users for yet more information, specifically their ATM PIN, social security number (SSN), and their mother’s maiden name—a bit of detail that could bypass an additional security layer for an account.

The PayPal phishing site then encourages users to link an email address to their PayPal account, giving the attackers a token, and therefore access, to that email account. It also encourages victims to upload official government documents, such as a passport, driver’s license, or national ID, to secure the account.

Uploading government documents and taking a selfie to verify them is a bigger ballgame for a victim than just losing credit card information — it could be used to create cryptocurrency trading accounts under the victim’s name. These could then be used to launder money, evade taxes, or provide anonymity for other cybercrimes. 

~ Akamai Security Research, Akamai

For a verification process for an account showing unusual activity, the amount of information being asked from users is ridiculous and overkill. However, Akamai researchers believe that socially engineering PayPal users to let them keep giving away their data is what makes this phishing kit successful.

“People judge brands and companies on their security measures these days,” said Akamai in the report. “Not only is it commonplace to verify your identity in a multitude of ways, but it’s also an expectation when logging in to sites with ultrasensitive information, such as financial or healthcare companies.”

Phishing, in general, has come a long way. Attackers have been learning from their mistakes thanks to our growing understanding of their tactics and social engineering techniques.

As users of online services, we, too, have an obligation over our own online security and privacy. And the only way one can tell apart two seemingly identical websites is to look at your browser’s address bar.

To rephrase a line: to err is human, to scrutinize URLs is divine.

Stay safe!

The post PayPal phishing campaign goes after more than just your login credentials appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Together with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI has released a warning about cybercriminals creating fraudulent cryptocurrency investment apps in order to defraud cryptocurrency investors.

The threat actors convince investors to download fraudulent mobile apps with the promise of huge opportunities and even larger gains.

And this new type of fraud turns out to be very profitable indeed, for the criminals at least—the FBI has identified 244 victims and estimates the approximate loss associated with this activity to be $42.7 million.

Mobile apps

It’s common for financial institutions to have a mobile app. These apps enhance the user experience and increase legitimate investment. Needless to say, threat actors sniffed out this opportunity to take advantage of the increased interest in mobile banking and cryptocurrency investing.

The FBI has observed threat actors using the names, logos, and other identifying information of legitimate financials in apps and websites.

Examples

While the basics are the same, there are some variants of this type of fraud which the FBI demonstrates with a few examples.

In the first one, victims were duped into downloading an app that used the name and logo of an actual US financial institution. Then the threat actors encouraged the victims to deposit cryptocurrency into wallets associated with their accounts on the app. But the app did not originate from the company the victims thought, and when they tried to withdraw funds from the app, they received an email stating they had to pay taxes on their investments before making withdrawals. After paying the supposed tax, the victims remained unable to withdraw funds.

Separately, threat actors operating under the name of a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange that closed in 2018 used the same method of having the victims pay taxes after which there was still no way to get a refund.

Then, threat actors using a name very similar to that of a currency exchange provider in Australia defrauded a victim by telling them that they had enrolled in a program requiring a minimum balance of $900,000. When the victim tried to cancel the subscription, they received instructions to deposit the requested funds or have all assets frozen.

Mitigation

To stay out of the claws of these imposters there are a few precautions you can take.

• Be wary of unsolicited requests to download investment applications, especially from unexpected sources.
• Verify the legitimacy of the app by checking out whether the company is legitimate and operates the app, and ensure that any financial disclosures or documents are tailored to the app’s purpose and the proposed financial activity.
• Treat applications with limited and/or broken functionality with skepticism.

Financial institutions should warn their customers about fake websites and apps using their logos to dupe investors.

Defrauded financial institutions and their customers are encouraged to contact the FBI via the Internet Crime Complaint Center or their local FBI field office.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Fraudulent cryptocurrency investment apps are duping investors appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A data compromise situation has impacted Roblox Corporation, the developers of the massive smash-hit video game Roblox. An as-yet unknown attacker has breached an employee account, and is in the process of exposing the data they’ve collected.

Nobody knows if they’ve exhausted their newly-plundered treasure trove, or if more leaks will follow.

Hacks and compromise: from myth to reality

The Roblox player base is young, and naturally enough worried about risks from cheats and account compromise. As a result, Roblox spends a fair amount of time debunking hacking myths. The most well known of these debunks probably relates to its John Doe and Jane Doe developer managed accounts.

Sadly for Roblox, this time around it appears that the compromise is very real with one key difference. It’s the developers under attack, rather than the players. For the time being, at least, they remain unaffected.

Internal employee information: leaked

A Roblox forum post has been playing host to around 4GB of stolen data. This data includes identification documents, spreadsheets related to Roblox creators, and various email addresses. At time of writing, there’s no specifics with regard to the “identification documents”. This could mean driving licence, passport, employee ID scan…we simply don’t know at the moment.

Roblox informed Motherboard that the documents were “illegally obtained as part of an extortion scheme that we refused to cooperate with”.

While there isn’t much information available yet, extortion tactics could suggest a double extortion attempt. The first thing to spring to mind here would be a ransomware attack. If the victim refuses to pay the ransom, the malware authors threaten to leak files. This can be incredibly damaging for all concerned, especially as files are often published even when the ransom is paid.

Of course, the extortion could spring from another source. Motherboard mentions the cache being stolen from an employee. The employee may have been phished. In this scenario, there is no ransomware involvement. Whatever the reason for the attack origin, players will naturally enough be very concerned.

What can you do to keep your Roblox account safe?

We don’t know if data has been grabbed outside of what’s already been leaked. There’s no indication from Roblox that user data has been accessed, which may only be known for certain as the investigation into the attack wraps up.

This is how you can help to keep your own account safe from harm in the meantime:

Watch out for phishing. Phishing attacks often follow on from breaches, although it may take days, or even weeks for an attempt to land in your mailbox. Be wary of mails asking you to login, or claiming that there has been a problem with your account. We suggest navigating to the official Roblox site directly instead of clicking links sent to your email address.

Set up two-step verification. This will help keep your account secure even if you were to hand over your login to a bogus website. Visit your account settings page, and then from the security tab select the type of two-step verification that you’d prefer. Roblox allows for a variety of different authenticator apps for use with your account.

Logout of public and shared devices. Roblox is great to play on the go. However, leaving your account logged in at on a public computer could result in item or account theft. Make sure you’ve fully logged out of any device which doesn’t belong to you. Public device compromise is still a very easy way to lose account access, and one which younger gamers could easily forget about as a potential threat.

The post Roblox breached: Internal documents posted online by unknown attackers appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

After the overturning of Roe V Wade, many feared that using, having access to, and sharing reproductive and sexual health data—once done freely—would be outlawed with the practice of abortion in many states. To protect such data from falling into the wrong hands,  Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA) sponsored the “My Body, My Data Act of 2022” bill.

Four days after the bill entered the House of Representatives and the Senate, US President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services, an order aimed at safeguarding healthcare services and protecting patient privacy and access to accurate information, among others.

Following this, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has warned tech companies and data brokers about potentially misusing the health data the US government seeks to protect.

The interconnectedness of devices has made life easier for most of us, but it remains a major nightmare for privacy-conscious consumers and organizations.

And while location data (among others) is generated by apps, consumers regularly generate their own sensitive data, too, in the form of apps aiding them in testing their blood sugar, recording their sleep patterns, or capturing their biometric features to access devices. In matters related to personal reproductive health, this could be in the form of apps for tracking periods, monitoring fertility, or managing contraceptive use.

The FTC asserts that a combination of these generated data “creates a new frontier of potential harms to consumers”.

“The misuse of mobile location and health information—including reproductive health data—exposes consumers to significant harm,” said the FTC in a post. “Criminals can use location or health data to facilitate phishing scams or commit identity theft. Stalkers and other criminals can use location or health data to inflict physical and emotional injury.”

The exposure of health information and medical conditions, especially data related to sexual activity or reproductive health, may subject people to discrimination, stigma, mental anguish, or other serious harms.

The FTC renewed its vow to go after companies that use American digital data unfairly or deceptively.

“The Commission is committed to using the full scope of its legal authorities to protect consumers’ privacy. We will vigorously enforce the law if we uncover illegal conduct that exploits Americans’ location, health, or other sensitive data. The FTC’s past enforcement actions provide a roadmap for firms seeking to comply with the law.”

The regulator will closely scrutinize corporate claims that data is “anonymized”, as research has shown that it can be trivial to de-anonymize such data, even when they’re part of a seemingly homogenous data set. The FTC would also be after companies that gather more than what they ask users to consent for or those that retain data indefinitely.

The post The FTC will go after companies misusing location, health, and other sensitive data appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• Elden Ring maker Bandai Namco hit by ransomware and data leaks
• Predatory Sparrow massively disrupts steel factories while keeping workers safe
• New variant of Android SpyJoker malware removed from Play Store after 3 million+ installs
• China’s Tonto Team increases espionage activities against Russia
• Endpoint security for Mac: 3 best practices
• Low-income consumers preyed on by fake ISP during pandemic, FCC says
• Ransomware rolled through business defenses in Q2 2022
• Cobalt Strikes again: UAC-0056 continues to target Ukraine in its latest campaign
• WhatsApp warns users: Fake versions of WhatsApp are trying to steal your personal info
• Update now—July Patch Tuesday patches include fix for exploited zero-day
• Fake streamed cricket matches knocks victims for six
• PyPI starts rolling out required 2FA for important projects
• Insecure password leads to Mangatoon data breach

Stay safe!

The post A week in security (July 11 – July 17) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Restaurants and other eating establishments are being targeted by extortionists who post fake reviews online and then offer to remove them in exchange for a gift card.

The possibility has always existed to leave poor reviews on Google Maps and elsewhere. However, seeing fraudsters get organised and issue extortion threats alongside the review is a new development.

According to the New York Times, businesses are being “deluged” with the poor reviews. Extortion threats are then mailed to the business owners, apologising for the actions but insisting that $75 Google Play gift cards be purchased in order to have the poor reviews erased.

Card codes are mailed to a ProtonMail account, where the scammers pick up their bounty. The codes are likely sold on at this point to turn a tidy profit. We don’t know if anyone actually sent a card code to the relevant mail address, nor if any reviews were removed by the fraudsters in cases where a payment was made.

The group claims to be based in India, and is currently targeting businesses in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.

The bad review bombing technique

Review bombing is something you’ve probably heard about in relation to gaming. When fans of certain titles become annoyed with changes in a game, or something is released which they object to, some turn to leaving bad reviews.

These reviews tend to be organised by groups, and plaster a product’s page with poor ratings. This has a negative impact on the title, and comes with a variety of side effects. It might even make the product less visible to other shoppers due to the product review score tanking.

Platforms selling games have had to take significant action against these tactics in recent years, developing new ways to spot inauthentic reviews and hiding them away from the public.

Defending your business from bad review practices

Google offers several guides for both reviewers and business owners where reviews are concerned.

Firstly, there’s detailed information about adding a review on Maps. While this is useful to know as a business owner, the really important information is on the How to remove reviews guide. Review removal requests are initiated via the Manage Reviews page. Before you submit, you need to check through the Prohibited and Restricted content section and see which category extortion attempts would fall under.

We suspect Civil Discourse > Harassment, or Deceptive Content > Misrepresentation would be good places to start.

• We don’t allow users to post content to harass other people or businesses, or encourage others to participate in harassment.

• Misleading information can impact the quality of information on Google Maps. For this reason, we don’t allow individuals to use Google Maps to mislead or deceive others, or make misrepresentations.

This includes:

• False or misleading accounts of the description or quality of a good or service. 

No matter which rules you feel that your extortion-laced missives fall under, here’s how to report in both Maps and Search:

Flag a review in Google Maps

1. On your computer, open Google Maps.
2. Find your Business Profile.
3. Find the review you’d like to report.
4. Click More > Flag as inappropriate.

Flag a review in Google Search

1. On your computer, go to Google.
2. Find your Business Profile.
3. Click Google Reviews.
4. Find the review you’d like to report.
5. Click More > Report review. Select the type of violation you want to report.

The post Extortionists target restaurants, demand money to take down bad reviews appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.