IT NEWS

Scammers are impersonating cryptocurrency exchanges, FBI warns

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a public service announcement warning the public about scammers impersonating cryptocurrency exchange employees to steal funds.

There are many types of crypto related scams, but in this case, the FBI provided an advisory about scammers that contact the target and pretend to be employees of a cryptocurrency exchange.

As scammers almost always do, they try to impose a feeling of urgency on the target, making potential victims feel as though they must act quickly because of, say, an acute problem with their account. Such an account may be allegedly compromised, or scammers could trick a victim into thinking that a third party is trying to gain access and withdraw funds from the account.

The scammer then offers to help the target to secure their funds, but to do so, the scammer—posing as a legitimate employee of the cryptocurrency exchange—first needs the victim’s log in credentials. Sometimes, scammers also send a malicious link to the victim which takes the victim to a illegitimate site that can collect identification information.

Armed with the information the target provided, the scammer drains the account. In a sense, the false warning that first came from the scammer was true—someone was after their account, it’s just that this specific someone was the person talking to the victim themselves.

Very similar scams exist that involve bank accounts, but most people are aware of how they can check and verify that the person they are in contact with actually works for their bank. With cryptocurrency exchanges, this is often not true.

Also, we see a lot of scary stories in the news about exchanges getting robbed or even disappearing with their customer’s money. Some crypto-related scams often deploy imposter websites which are hard to discern from the real ones.

Recovery services are another successful avenue for scammers. In June, the FBI warned of fraudsters posing as lawyers representing fictitious law firms that contact scam victims and offer their services, claiming to have the authorization to investigate fund recovery cases.

These scammers are usually after more money or personal information that could lead to identity theft.

The California Department of Financial Protection & Innovation (DFPI) has a very useful crypto scam tracker that allows visitors to read and search through hundreds of different real-life scenarios of crypto-related scams.

The most important ground rule when it comes to cryptocurrency or financial scams of any kind is: if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is.

Besides that, there are a few other guidelines that can keep you out of trouble.

  • Don’t respond to messages, emails or other communications that arrive unexpectedly or from strange senders/phone numbers.
  • First verify that the person you are communicating with represents the company they claim to work for. Do this using another channel. A call to a number you know to be legitimate, for example.
  • Don’t let scammers rush you into decisions or actions. They try to make you feel a sense of urgency, so you don’t take the necessary time to think things through.
  • Always research whether the cryptowallet, cryptoexchange, or app they are sending you to is trustworthy before signing up for it or installing something.
  • Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for existing accounts which makes it harder for anyone to take over your account.
  • Never give out more information than absolutely necessary. A legitimate company will not ask for more information.

The FBI requests victims report activity associated with this scam to the FBI IC3 at www.ic3.gov.

The FBI also requests victims provide any transaction information associated with the scam. For more information on what to provide the FBI, see prior IC3 PSA Alert Number I-082423-PSA.


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Meta to pay $1.4 billion over unauthorized facial recognition image capture

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to “stop the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law.”

The prime reason for the initial lawsuit that led to the settlement was Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” feature that used facial recognition. This feature was rolled out in 2011 to “improve the user experience by making it easier for users to tag photographs with the names of people in the photo.”

However, Meta allegedly automatically turned this feature on for all Texans without explaining how the feature worked. This method made it possible to run facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted, for a long time.

In 2019, Facebook said it had always given control to users about the use of face recognition technology to recognize users in photos, but it wasn’t until December 2017 that Facebook introduced settings that allowed users to manage whether Facebook used face recognition technology on their photos to suggest tags.

Texas’s “Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier” (CUBI) Act forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier.

So, in February 2022, Attorney General Paxton sued Meta for unlawfully capturing the biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining their informed consent as required by Texas law. Approximately two years after filing the petition, Texas reached a settlement agreement with Meta who will pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years.

The face recognition setting is no longer available after Facebook reluctantly shut the Face Recognition system down by the end of 2021:

“Making this change required careful consideration, because we have seen a number of places where face recognition can be highly valued by people using platforms.

We believe facial recognition can help for products like these with privacy, transparency and control in place, so you decide if and how your face is used. We will continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts.”

Personally, I feel since biometrics are increasingly used for identification by more important services than social media, those platforms have no business gathering them. Therefore, we welcome Facebook’s move away from this kind of broad identification and will closely follow its planned future move toward narrower forms of personal authentication.

We don’t just report on threats – we help protect your social media

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your social media accounts by using Cyrus, powered by Malwarebytes.

Apple fixes Siri vulnerabilities that could have allowed sensitive data theft from locked device. Update now!

Apple has released security updates for many of its products in order to patch several vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to steal sensitive information from a locked device.

Included in the patches for Apple Watch, iOS, and iPadOS are four vulnerabilities in Siri. While your device is locked there are several voice-commands your digital assistant can process.

Apple has restricted these options to stop an attacker with physical access from being able to access contacts from the lock screen and access other sensitive user data. Using Siri on a locked device has limitations to protect your privacy and security, and the digital assistant should only be able to perform tasks that do not require access to sensitive data locked behind the device’s security systems, such as Face ID or a passcode.

A similar vulnerability was also patched in the VoiceOver component in Apple Watch, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS Ventura. To check whether VoiceOver is on or off on your iPhone or iPad, you can check by looking at Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver.

To check if you’re using the latest software version of iOS and iPadOS, go to Settings > General > Software Update. You want to be on iOS 17.6 or iPadOS 17.6, so update now if you’re not. It’s also worth turning on Automatic Updates if you haven’t already. You can do that on the same screen.

Update is available
iPad Software update is available

Here’s an overview of the available updates for the various Apple products:

Name: Available for:
Safari 17.6 macOS Monterey and macOS Ventura
iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6 iPhone XS and later, iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation and later, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 6th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later
iOS 16.7.9 and iPadOS 16.7.9 iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad 5th generation, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, and iPad Pro 12.9-inch 1st generation
macOS Sonoma 14.6 macOS Sonoma
macOS Ventura 13.6.8 macOS Ventura
macOS Monterey 12.7.6 macOS Monterey
watchOS 10.6 Apple Watch Series 4 and later
tvOS 17.6 Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K (all models)
visionOS 1.3 Apple Vision Pro
iOS 15.8.3 and iPadOS 15.8.3

iPhone 6s (all models), iPhone 7 (all models), iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini (4th generation), and iPod touch (7th generation)

Apple also patched the regreSSHion vulnerability that allows unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) in OpenSSH.

For beta testers Apple also released the first beta of iOS 18.1 to developers. This update is available for iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max and includes the first set of Apple Intelligence features, such as Writing Tools, new features for Mail and notifications, upgrades to Photos, and more.


We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.

Threat actor impersonates Google via fake ad for Authenticator

We have previously reported on the brand impersonation issue with Google ads: users who search for popular keywords are shown malicious ads that purport to be from an official vendor.

Not only does this trick innocent victims into downloading malware or losing their data to phishing sites, it also erodes trust in brands and by association in Google Search itself.

Today, we show yet another example of brand misuse, except that this one targets Google itself. If you were trying to download the popular Google Authenticator (a multi-factor authentication program) via a Google search in the past few days, you may have inadvertently installed malware on your computer.

A similar distribution site and the same payload were previously reported by sandbox maker AnyRun. In this blog post, we will reveal the missing piece at the top of the killchain, namely the Google ad that was involved in tricking users into visiting a decoy website.

Trust, but ‘verified’?

The core issue with brand impersonation comes from ads that appear as if they were from official sources and advertisers’ identities verified by Google. This was the case here with this ad for Authenticator:

image fa7354

The truth is Larry Marr has nothing to do with Google, and is likely a fake account. We can follow what happens when you click on the ad by monitoring web traffic. We see a number of redirects via intermediary domains controlled by the attacker, before landing on a fake site for Authenticator.

image 388329

Fake site leads to signed payload hosted on Github

The fraudulent site chromeweb-authenticators[.]com was registered via NICENIC INTERNATIONAL GROUP CO., LIMITED on the same day as the ad was observed.

image 53961f

Looking at the site’s source code, we can see the code responsible for downloading Authenticator.exe from GitHub. Note the comments from the author in Russian:

image 67297f

Hosting the file on GitHub allows the threat actor to use a trusted cloud resource, unlikely to be blocked via conventional means. While GitHub is the de facto software repository, not all applications or scripts hosted on it are legitimate. In fact, anyone can create an account and upload files, which is exactly what the threat actor did under the username authe-gogle, creating the authgg repository that contains the malicious Authenticator.exe:

image 173587

Looking at the file itself, we can see that it has been digitally signed by “Songyuan Meiying Electronic Products Co., Ltd.” just one day before, and the signature is still valid at the time of writing:

image b710e0

The malware, DeerStealer, is a kind of stealer that will grab and exfitrate your personal data via an attacker-controlled website hosted at vaniloin[.]fun.

Conclusion

Threat actors have been abusing Google ads as a way to trick users into visiting phishing and malware sites. Since the whole premise of these attacks relies on social engineering, it is absolutely critical to properly distinguish real advertisers from fake ones.

As we saw in this case, some unknown individual was able to impersonate Google and successfully push malware disguised as a branded Google product as well.

We should note that Google Authenticator is a well-known and trusted multi factor authentication tool, so there is some irony in potential victims getting compromised while trying to improve their security posture. We recommend avoiding clicking on ads to download any kind of software and instead visiting the official repositories directly.

Malwarebytes blocks access to the fake Authenticator website, and we detect the payload as Spyware.DeerStealer.

image f26259

Indicators of Compromise

Malicious domains

vcczen[.]eu
tmdr7[.]mom
chromeweb-authenticators[.]com

Payload (stealer)

5d1e3b113e15fc5fd4a08f41e553b8fd0eaace74b6dc034e0f6237c5e10aa737

C2

vaniloin[.]fun

SIEM is not storage, with Jess Dodson (Lock and Code S05E16)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

In the world of business cybersecurity, the powerful technology known as “Security Information and Event Management” is sometimes thwarted by the most unexpected actors—the very people setting it up.

Security Information and Event Management—or SIEM—is a term used to describe data-collecting products that businesses rely on to make sense of everything going on inside their network, in the hopes of catching and stopping cyberattacks. SIEM systems can log events and information across an entire organization and its networks. When properly set up, SIEMs can collect activity data from work-issued devices, vital servers, and even the software that an organization rolls out to its workforce. The purpose of all this collection is to catch what might easily be missed.

For instance, SIEMs can collect information about repeated login attempts occurring at 2:00 am from a set of login credentials that belong to an employee who doesn’t typically start their day until 8:00 am. SIEMs can also collect whether the login credentials of an employee with typically low access privileges are being used to attempt to log into security systems far beyond their job scope. SIEMs must also take in the data from an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tool, and they can hoover up nearly anything that a security team wants—from printer logs, to firewall logs, to individual uses of PowerShell.

But just because a SIEM can collect something, doesn’t necessarily mean that it should.

Log activity for an organization of 1,000 employees is tremendous, and the collection of frequent activity could bog down a SIEM with noise, slow down a security team with useless data, and rack up serious expenses for a company.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Microsoft cloud solution architect Jess Dodson about how companies and organizations can set up, manage, and maintain their SIEMs, along with what advertising pitfalls to avoid when doing their shopping. Plus, Dodson warns about one of the simplest mistakes in trying to save budget—setting up arbitrary data caps on collection that could leave an organization blind.

“A small SMB organization … were trying to save costs, so they went and looked at what they were collecting and they found their biggest ingestion point,” Dodson said. “And what their biggest ingestion point was was their Windows security events, and then they looked further and looked for the event IDs that were costing them the most, and so they got rid of those.”

Dodson continued:

“Problem was the ones they got rid of were their Log On/Log Off events, which I think most people would agree is kind of important from a security perspective.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)


Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

US senators ask FTC to investigate car makers’ privacy practices

An ongoing US Senate investigation indicated that connected car makers violate consumer privacy by sharing and selling drivers’ data, including their location, on a vast scale, and that the same car makers often obtain consumer consent through deception.

Based on this investigation, senators have urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate automakers’ disclosure of millions of Americans’ driving data to data brokers, and to share new-found details about the practice.

And they don’t stop there:

“If the FTC determines that these companies violated the law, we urge you to hold the companies and their senior executives responsible.”

At Malwarebytes, we reported how a team of researchers at Mozilla who reviewed the privacy and data collection policies of various product categories for several years now, named “Privacy Not Included,” found cars to be the worst product category they ever reviewed for privacy.

A modern car hasn’t just been a transportation vehicle for a long time. With multiple digital systems, they are increasingly plugged into web applications and digital processes—applications and processes that are vulnerable to security flaws.

But at least those vulnerabilities are not intentional. Some other privacy issues are.

In November 2023, a judge ruled it’s fine for car makers to intercept your text messages, because the practice doesn’t meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law. 

The senators found some worrying aspects of modern car data collection practices, which included the use of dark patterns to obtain consent in ways that did not qualify as “informed” consent. Dark patterns, also known as deceptive design patterns, occur when a user interface has been carefully crafted to nudge or trick users into doing things they didn’t set out to do.

Another problem lies in the fact that data was found to be sold on to data brokers. These services can allow interested parties—from law enforcement agencies to marketing firms and even scammers—to access records that contain usernames, passwords (including in clear text), email addresses, IP addresses, and more.

Three car makers confirmed their disclosure of drivers’ data to one data broker, such as acceleration and braking data. One of the car makers also confirmed that it disclosed customer location data to two other companies, which it refused to name.

The named data broker sold these reports to auto insurance companies and also provided automakers with some of this information, including a driving score and safe driving suggestions. According to the New York Times, car manufacturers shared driving behavior data from more than eight million cars.

The senators also worry that some car makers may have gone as far as exclusively advertising “safe driving” programs as a way to lower their insurance bills, without revealing that some insurers might charge some drivers more based on their telematics data.

Some states—including Louisiana and Montana—limited the use of telematics data to raise insurance premiums, while California only permits telematics data sharing for mileage verification.

The senators requested that:

“The FTC should hold accountable the automakers, which shared their customers’ data with data brokers without obtaining informed consent, as well as the data brokers, which resold data that had not been obtained in a lawful manner. Given the high number of consumers impacted, and the outrageous manipulation of consumers using dark patterns, the FTC should also hold senior company officials responsible for their flagrant abuse of their customers’ privacy.”

At Malwarebytes, we have expressed our concerns about the number of buyers and brokers for data. That’s regardless of whether they are there to sell data to anyone that is willing to pay, or only offer it to those that rightfully own the data. It’s also regardless of how the data were obtained, in a breach or by “consent.”

As we all learned in economics, demand drives up the price and the higher the price the more attractive it becomes to go after the data. And, as the mother-of-all-breaches (MOAB) incident clearly demonstrated, not everyone is as careful as they should be about accidentally exposing their data collection.

Check your exposure

You can verify whether your information is available online due to data breaches by using the Malwarebytes Digital Footprint portal. Just enter your email address (try the one your car dealership has) to our free Digital Footprint scan, and we’ll give you a report. For those whose information was not included, you’ll still likely find other exposures in previous data breaches.


We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identity

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection.

A week in security (July 22 – July 28)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

Last week on ThreatDown:

Stay safe!


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Meta takes down 63,000 sextortion-related accounts on Instagram

Meta announced the take-down of 63,000 sextortion-related Instagram accounts in Nigeria alone.

The action was directed against a group known as Yahoo Boys, a loosely organized set of cybercriminals that largely operate out of Nigeria and specialize in different types of scams.

Meta took down a host of accounts, including some 2,500 that belonged to a coordinated group of around 20 criminals which primarily targeted adult men in the US.

Sextortion, the act of blackmailing individuals for cash in return for not leaking sensitive images and videos, has been a problem for many years. Sextortion and sextortion scams are sometimes carried out by people familiar with the target, but most of the time, cybercriminals who have no relationship to the victim are to blame.

Additionally, Meta took down around 7,200 assets, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages and 5,700 Facebook Groups, also based in Nigeria. These accounts provided training, scripts, and complete guides for conducting scams. Nigeria still grapples with its reputation for being a source of internet-era fraud (the “Nigerian Prince” email scam is engrained in the public’s mind), and some residents are reportedly tricked into becoming scammers through predatory “classes” and programs that promise wealth.

Recently, after a successful operation targeting West African organized crime groups led to hundreds of arrests,  Isaac Oginni, Director of INTERPOL’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC) said:

“The volume of financial fraud stemming from West Africa is alarming and increasing. This operation’s results underscore the critical need for international law enforcement collaboration to combat these extensive criminal networks.”

While Meta’s investigation showed that the majority of these scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and mostly targeted adults, it did reveal some attempts to target minors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported in January 2024 that it saw a huge increase in the number of sextortion cases involving children and teens, mainly where the criminals would threaten and coerce the victims into sending explicit images online.

Children are led to believe they are communicating with someone their own age and tricked into sending nude pictures, which will later be used to threaten the victim with exposure. Last month, the BBC reported on an example of how devastating the consequences of sextortion can be, especially on young ones. In that case, Meta handed over data relating to a Scottish teenager who ended his life after becoming the victim of a sextortion gang on Instagram.

A US Senate committee accused Meta in February of not doing enough to protect children online and called for action by social media giants, in general, to do better.

 In his opening statement, Ranking Member Senator Lindsey Graham held Mark Zuckerberg and the other CEOs to immediate account:

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so but you have blood on your hands. … You have a product that’s killing people.”

Since then, Meta has said that it has learned new signals to identify accounts that are potentially engaging in sextortion, and the company is taking steps to help prevent these accounts from finding and interacting with teens.

“Our teams have deep experience in fighting this crime and work closely with experts to recognize the tactics scammers use, understand how they evolve and develop effective ways to help stop them.”

These takedowns seem to be a good indication that this is true. But these scammers will undoubtedly return to social media platforms to continue their cybercriminal run.

For those with children that don’t know where to start in keeping kids safe online, we recommend reading: Internet safety tips for kids and teens: A comprehensive guide for the modern parent.

The FBI asks that if young people are being exploited, they are the victim of a crime and should report it. Contact your local FBI field office, call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or report it online at tips.fbi.gov.

Stay safe!

We don’t just report on threats – we help protect your social media

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your social media accounts by using Cyrus, powered by Malwarebytes.

Windows update may present users with a BitLocker recovery screen

Some Windows users may see a BitLocker Recovery screen after applying the Microsoft patch Tuesday updates. BitLocker is a Windows security feature that encrypts entire drives. It prevents someone that has obtained a stolen or lost device from reading the files stored on that drive.

Unfortunately, though, Microsoft launched an update this month that has caused problems for some Windows systems. Without telling the public what, exactly, has gone wrong, Microsoft provided some details about what might happen on the Windows release health dashboard.

Affected systems are running Windows 10 and 11 or one of the server versions (Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008.). And the affected systems are very likely to have Device Encryption enabled.

You can find out if you have Device Encryption enabled by looking at:

  • Settings
  • Privacy & Security
  • Device encryption

If Device encryption doesn’t appear under Privacy & Security, it isn’t available for your system.

Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t see the BitLocker Recovery screen unless you enter the wrong PIN too many times or when you’ve made some hardware or firmware changes.

If you are affected by this faulty update, you will be presented with a screen similar to this one when you boot the system.

BitLocker recovery screen
BitLocker recovery screen

On the screen, you’re asked to Enter the recovery key for this drive. Windows will also show a recovery ID to identify your key. Keep it handy since you may need this to find the recovery key.

How to get the recovery key

On another device, you can log in at  https://aka.ms/myrecoverykey with your Microsoft account ID that you use on the currently affected system. Once logged in, you’ll see a list of the devices registered to that ID showing:

  • The Device name
  • The Key ID
  • The Recovery Key
  • Which drive type (OSV drive is a Primary drive containing the Operating System. FDV drive is a Secondary drive)
  • Key upload date

Find the Recovery key you need by looking for the Key ID that matches the Recovery key ID shown in the BitLocker Recovery screen and enter the Recovery Key listed behind that Key ID in the BitLocker Recovery screen.

Once you’ve entered the correct Recovery Key, your system should boot to the normal login screen.


We don’t just report on threats—we remove them

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

TracFone will pay $16 million to settle FCC data breach investigation

Following three separate data breaches between 2021 and 2023 which exposed the proprietary information (PI) of TracFone Wireless customers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that the Verizon-owned company has agreed to pay a $16 million civil penalty to settle the government investigation, and it has made an agreement to improve its application programming interface  (API) security.

TracFone Wireless Inc. is an American prepay wireless service provider wholly owned by Verizon. TracFone services are used by the brands Straight Talk, Total by Verizon Wireless, and Walmart Family Mobile.

The settlement ends an investigation into TracFone’s security practices to uncover whether the breaches were the result of ineffective cybersecurity protocols. The Enforcement Bureau (EB) of the FCC found that cybercriminals gained access to certain TracFone customer information, including PI and customer proprietary network information (CPNI), by exploiting vulnerabilities related to customer-facing APIs.

APIs allow different computer programs or components to communicate with one another. When the security behind the APIs is not secure enough, cybercriminals can abuse them to gather information without authorization.

The FCC media release explains in detail that it is possible to leverage numerous APIs to access customer information from websites. And according to the FCC’s own Enforcement Bureau, that is exactly what happened at TracFone.

In addition to the civil penalty, the FCC secured extra assignments for TracFone in the Consent Decree:

  • TracFone has to deploy a mandated information security program, with novel provisions to reduce API vulnerabilities in ways consistent with widely accepted standards, like those identified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP).
  • TracFone must improve protection measures against SIM-swapping. SIM swapping (and the very similar port-out fraud) is the unlawful use of someone’s personal information to steal their phone number and swap or transfer it to another device. With this, criminals can intercept calls, messages, and certain multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes.
  • TracFone has to undergo annual assessments—including by independent third parties—of its information security program.
  • Employees and certain third parties are to receive privacy and security awareness training.

The Enforcement Bureau reported to the FCC that:

“After gaining access to customer information during one of the three breaches, the threat actors completed an undisclosed number of unauthorized port-outs.”

 All this occurs as the FCC has continued a mission against SIM-swapping.

Protecting yourself after a data breach

There are some actions you can take if you are, or suspect you may have been, the victim of a data breach.

  • Check the vendor’s advice. Every breach is different, so check with the vendor to find out what’s happened and follow any specific advice they offer.
  • Change your password. You can make a stolen password useless to thieves by changing it. Choose a strong password that you don’t use for anything else. Better yet, let a password manager choose one for you.
  • Enable two-factor authentication (2FA). If you can, use a FIDO2-compliant hardware key, laptop or phone as your second factor. Some forms of two-factor authentication (2FA) can be phished just as easily as a password. 2FA that relies on a FIDO2 device can’t be phished.
  • Watch out for fake vendors. The thieves may contact you posing as the vendor. Check the vendor website to see if they are contacting victims and verify the identity of anyone who contacts you using a different communication channel.
  • Take your time. Phishing attacks often impersonate people or brands you know, and use themes that require urgent attention, such as missed deliveries, account suspensions, and security alerts.
  • Consider not storing your card details. It’s definitely more convenient to get sites to remember your card details for you, but we highly recommend not storing that information on websites.
  • Set up identity monitoring. Identity monitoring alerts you if your personal information is found being traded illegally online, and helps you recover after.

Check your exposure

You can verify whether your information is available online due to data breaches by using the Malwarebytes Digital Footprint portal. Just enter your email address (it’s best to submit the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan, and we’ll give you a report. For those whose information was not included, you’ll still likely find other exposures in previous data breaches.


We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identity

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection.