IT NEWS

In an act of exquisite trolling, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has announced further details about its disruption of the LockBit ransomware group by using the group’s own dark web website.

Since the demise of Conti in 2022, LockBit has been unchallenged as the most prolific ransomware group in the world. In the last 12 months it has racked up more than two and half times as many known attacks as its closest rival. That all stopped yesterday, though, when the LockBit site was replaced with a banner decorated with the flags and badges of the countries and agencies that cooperated to “disrupt” it. The banner read:

This site is now under the control of The National Crime Agency of the UK, working in close cooperation with the FBI and the international law enforcement task force, ‘Operation Cronos’.

It also promised more information would be revealed today at 11:30 GMT. It didn’t disappoint. There was a press release, of course, and a video:

But the real treat was an updated version of the LockBit website that returned it to something resembling its former self. However, some crucial details had changed. Until yesterday, the secret dark web site was used to list details of the organizations being held to ransom by LockBit. Green squares represented companies whose data had been leaked. Timers on the red squares showed companies under threat of a leak just how long they had until their stolen data would be published.

Not any more, though.

In a graphic illustration of just how comprehensively the LockBit group has been compromised, the green squares now detail published information about the takedown, while red squares tease further reveals for the coming days.

Today, after infiltrating the group’s network, the NCA has taken control of LockBit’s services, compromising their entire criminal enterprise.

As well as taking over the leak site, law enforcement agencies have taken over LockBit’s administration environment, seized the infrastructure used by LockBit’s data exfiltration tool, Stealbit, captured over 1,000 decryption keys, and frozen 200 cryptocurrency accounts.

The group’s source code has also fallen into the hands of law enforcement, along with “a vast amount of intelligence” from its systems. Criminal affiliates who logged into the compromised environment were warned that the NCA knows all about their activities too, and the NCA reports that 28 servers belonging to LockBit affiliates have been taken down, too.

Two “LockBit actors” have been arrested in Poland and Ukraine, and the US Department of Justice has announced that two defendants responsible for using LockBit in ransomware attacks have been charged, are in custody, and will face trial in the US. It also unsealed indictments against two Russian nationals, for conspiring to commit LockBit attacks. 

There are numerous reveals promised for the next few days, but the most tantalising is the imminent uncloaking of LockBit’s leader and spokesperson, LockBitSupp.

The NCA could have put the information about the takedown anywhere, but it didn’t; it did something memorable, humorous, and deliberately humiliating with it. In other words, it mimicked perfectly the way that ransomware gangs troll the world and each other. In doing so, the NCA signaled that it knows all about LockBit and the broader community of criminals it belongs to. It knows that LockBit’s affiliates and rivals will be watching, and looking over their shoulder.

Good times.

How to avoid ransomware

• Block common forms of entry. Create a plan for patching vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems quickly; and disable or harden remote access like RDP and VPNs.
• Prevent intrusions. Stop threats early before they can even infiltrate or infect your endpoints. Use endpoint security software that can prevent exploits and malware used to deliver ransomware.
• Detect intrusions. Make it harder for intruders to operate inside your organization by segmenting networks and assigning access rights prudently. Use EDR or MDR to detect unusual activity before an attack occurs.
• Stop malicious encryption. Deploy Endpoint Detection and Response software like ThreatDown EDR that uses multiple different detection techniques to identify ransomware, and ransomware rollback to restore damaged system files.
• Create offsite, offline backups. Keep backups offsite and offline, beyond the reach of attackers. Test them regularly to make sure you can restore essential business functions swiftly.
• Don’t get attacked twice. Once you’ve isolated the outbreak and stopped the first attack, you must remove every trace of the attackers, their malware, their tools, and their methods of entry, to avoid being attacked again.

You can learn more about the threat of big game ransomware like LockBit and ALPHV in our 2024 State of Malware report.

Navigating the complex world of alerts just got easier, thanks to our latest enhancements to the ThreatDown Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platform. 

The detailed technical information in EDR alerts—replete with complicated diagrams and references to advanced cybersecurity tactics—can overwhelm even seasoned professionals, let alone those with less experience. With our latest update, however, we’ve tackled this challenge head on. 

Let’s dive further into how our new Incident Summary and Timeline updates make the investigation process more straightforward and accessible. 

Incident Summary and Timeline updates

ThreatDown EDR’s enhancements include two key features: an incident summary that cuts through the jargon and an interactive timeline for a clearer understanding of each alert.  

The incident summary translates the complex strategies and objectives of cyber threats in straightforward terms. For example, it may indicate the threat actor was “disabling security software” or “collecting credentials”— instead of using technical MITRE ATT&CK terminology that requires extra research. 

With this new, high-level narrative, analysts and customers have a framework to understand what potentially sensitive behaviors triggered an alert without delving into specific process names or registry keys. It can help quickly differentiate suspected malicious incidents from false positives and focus resources appropriately. 

The interactive timeline adds another layer of clarity, presenting a chronological sequence of events related to the alert, each marked with a timestamp and color-coded based on severity. Additional details, such as the processes involved and user accounts, are available with a simple click. 

Users can also scroll through to spot patterns and grasp the incident’s narrative in a unified view, avoiding the complexity of connecting disparate alerts.  

While technical details remain available below for more in-depth information, the new summary and timeline features can help users quickly kick off an investigation or close benign alerts.  

The best of both worlds for ThreatDown users 

By merging simplified language with user-friendly features, ThreatDown EDR’s latest updates reduce the time analysts and customers need to understand alerts—ultimately accelerating the detection and resolution of real threats.  

Not a current user but want to learn more?  Get a free trial of ThreatDown Bundles today.

On the internet, people need to worry about more than just opening suspicious email attachments or entering their sensitive information into harmful websites—they also need to worry about their Google searches.

That’s because last year, as revealed in our 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report, cybercriminals flocked to a malware delivery method that doesn’t require they know a victim’s email address, login credentials, personal information, or, anything, really.

Instead, cybercriminals just need to fool someone into clicking on a search result that looks remarkably legitimate.

This is the work of “malicious advertising,” or “malvertising,” for short. Malvertising is not malware itself. Instead, it’s a sneaky process of placing malware, viruses, or other cyber infections on a person’s computer, tablet, or smart phone. The malware that eventually slips onto a person’s device comes in many varieties, but cybercriminals tend to favor malware that can steal a person’s login credentials and information. With this newly stolen information, cybercriminals can then pry into sensitive online accounts that belong to the victim.

But before any of that digital theft can occur, cybercriminals must first ensnare a victim, and they do this by abusing the digital ad infrastructure underpinning Google search results.

Think about searching on Google for “running shoes”—you’ll likely see ads for Nike and Adidas. A Google search for “best carry-on luggage” will invariably produce ads for the consumer brands Monos and Away. And a Google search for a brand like Amazon will show, as expected, ads for Amazon.

But cybercriminals know this, and in response, they’ve created ads that look legitimate, but instead direct victims to malicious websites that carry malware. The websites themselves, too, bear a striking resemblance to whatever product or brand they’re imitating, so as to maintain a charade of legitimacy. From these websites, users download what they think is a valid piece of software, instead downloading malware that leaves them open to further attacks.

It’s true that malvertising is often understood as a risk to businesses, but the copycat websites that are created by cybercriminals can and often do impersonate popular brands for everyday users, too.

As revealed in our 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report, the five most impersonated brands for malvertising last year included:

1. Amazon
2. Rufus
3. Weebly
4. NotePad++
5. TradingView

These five brands may not all carry the same familiarity, but their products and services capture a broad swath of user interest, from Weebly’s website creation products, to TradingView’s investment trading platform, to Rufus’s niche-but-useful portable OS booting tool.

Why the increase in malvertising last year?

If Google ads have been around for more than a decade, why are they only being abused by cybercriminals now? The truth is, malvertising has been around for years, but a particular resurgence was recorded more recently.

In 2022, cybercriminals lost access to one of their favorite methods of delivering malware.

That summer, Microsoft announced that it would finally block “macros” that were embedded into files that were downloaded from the internet. Macros are essentially instructions that users can program so that multiple tasks can be bundled together. The danger, though, is that cybercriminals would pre-program macros within certain files for Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, and then send those files as malicious email attachments. Once those attachments were downloaded and opened by users, the embedded macros would trigger a set of instructions directing a person’s computer to install malware from a dangerous website online.

Macros were a scourge for cybersecurity for years, as they were effective and easy to deliver.

But when Microsoft restricted macro capabilities in 2022, cybercriminals needed to find another malware delivery channel. They focused on malvertising.

Today’s malvertising is increasingly sophisticated, as cybercriminals can create and purchase online ads that target specific types of users based on location and demographics. Concerningly, modern malvertising can even avoid basic fraud detection as cybercriminals can create websites that determine whether a user is a real person or simply a bot that is trawling the web to find and flag malicious activity.

How to protect against malvertising

The threat of malvertising is multi-layered: There are the fraudulent ads that cybercriminals place on Google search results, the malicious websites that imitate legitimate brands and companies to convince users to download malware, and the malware infection itself.

As such, any successful defense strategy must be multi-layered.

For safe browsing, people can rely on Malwarebytes Browser Guard, a browser extension that blocks third-party tracking and flags malicious websites known to be in the control of cybercriminals. As we wrote before:

“Malwarebytes Browser Guard provides additional protection to standard ad-blocking features by covering a larger area of the attack chain all the way to domains controlled by attackers. Thanks to its built-in heuristic engine it can also proactively block never-before-seen malicious websites.”

The problem with malvertising, though, is that new malicious websites are created every single day. Cybersecurity defenders, then, are often caught in a game of catch-up.

Here, users can find safety from Malwarebytes Premium, which provides real-time protection to detect and stop any cyberthreats that get installed onto a device, even if those threats are masquerading as legitimate apps or software.

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.

Last September, we wrote an article about how Wyze home cameras temporarily showed other people’s security feeds.

As far as home cameras go, we said this is absolutely up there at the top of the “things you don’t want to happen” list. Turning your customers into Peeping Tom against their will and exposing other customers’ footage is definitely not OK.

It’s not OK, but yet here we are again. On February 17, TheVerge reported that history had repeated itself. Wyze co-founder David Crosby confirmed that users were able to briefly see into a stranger’s property because they were shown an image from someone else’s camera.

Crosby told The Verge:

“We have now identified a security issue where some users were able to see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab.”

So, it’s not a full feed and just a thumbnail, you might think. Is that such a big deal? Well, it was a bit more than that. Users got notification alerts for events in their house. I don’t know how you feel when you get one of those while you know there shouldn’t be anyone there, but it’s enough to make me nervous.

Imagine your surprise when you then see someone else’s house as the cause for that notification.

Wyze blames the issue on overload and corruption of user data after an AWS outage. However, AWS did not report an outage during the time Wyze cameras were having these problems.

And, while the company originally said it had identified 14 instances of the security issue, the number of complaints on Reddit and the Wyze forums indicated that there must have been a lot more.

This turned out to be the case. In an email sent to customers, Wyze revealed that it was actually around 13,000 people who got an unauthorized peek at thumbnails from other people’s homes.

Wyze chalks up the incident to a recently-integrated third-party caching client library which caused the issue when they brought back cameras online after an outage at AWS.

“This client library received unprecedented load conditions caused by devices coming back online all at once. As a result of increased demand, it mixed up device ID and user ID mapping and connected some data to incorrect accounts.”

Wyze says it has added an extra layer of verification before users can view Event videos.

So, all we can do is hope we don’t have to write another story like this one in a few months.

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.

A Ukrainian national, Mark Sokolovsky, has been indicted for crimes related to fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft and extradited to the United States from the Netherlands, the US Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Texas has announced.

In March 2022, around the same time of Sokolovsky’s arrest by Dutch authorities, the FBI and law enforcement partners in Italy and the Netherlands dismantled the digital infrastructure supporting the Raccoon Infostealer, taking its then existing version offline.

On September 13, 2022, the Amsterdam District Court ordered Sokolovsky’s extradition to Texas, where many of his victims were located. After the Sokolovsky’s appeal was dismissed in June of 2023, the extradition could take place.

Sokolovsky is suspected of operating the Raccoon Infostealer as a malware-as-a-service (MaaS). This means criminals intent on stealing information could “hire” the malware and the infrastructure to steal data from victim computers.

For this reason Sokolovsky is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and related activity in connection with computers; one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering; and one count of aggravated identity theft. He made his initial court appearance February 9, and is being held in custody pending trial. If convicted, he will be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years for wire fraud and money laundering, five years for computer fraud charges, and a mandatory two-year term for identity theft offenses.

The Raccoon Infostealer operation is a tightly-run ship, to the extent that customers have digital signatures tied to their executables. If files end up on malware scanning services, the malware authors know exactly where the leak originated.

Raccoon’s two most popular delivery methods are phishing campaigns (the tried and tested malicious Word document/Macro combination) and exploit kits. Once data is located on the target system, it is eventually placed into a .zip file and sent to the malware Command and Control (C&C) server.

The main targets of the stealer are credit card data, autofill entries, browser passwords, and cryptocurrency wallets.

The FBI identified at least 50 million unique credentials stolen by Raccoon Infostealer from victims worldwide. Because of this, the agency has created a dedicated website, raccoon.ic3.gov, where potential victims can check if their data has been stolen. All they need to do is to enter their email address. Note, however, that the website only contains data for US-based victims. 

The FBI also encourages potential victims to fill out a detailed complaint and share the harm the malware caused them at the FBI’s Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Digital Footprint scan

If you want to find out how much of your own data is exposed online, you can try our free Digital Footprint scan. Fill in the email address you’re curious about (it’s best to submit the one you most frequently use) and we’ll send you a report.

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 Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection.

For the last two years the absolute worst, most prolific, most globally significant “big game” ransomware gang has been LockBit.

This evening its position as ransomware’s biggest beast is suddenly in doubt, following some non-consensual website redecoration at the hands of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

The LockBit dark web site usually hosts the names and data of organisations that refused to pay ransoms. That’s been replaced by a message from the NCA, saying:

This site is now under the control of The National Crime Agency of the UK, working in close cooperation with the FBI and the international law enforcement task force, ‘Operation Cronos’.

Repleat with the flags and badges of the countries and agencies involved, the new look site promises there is more to come. “We can confirm that Lockbit’s services have been disrupted as a result of International Law Enforcement action – this is an ongoing and developing operation. Return here for more information at: 11:30 GMT on Tuesday 20th Feb.

Since the demise of Conti in 2022, LockBit has been unchallenged as the most prolific ransomware group in the world. In the last 12 months it has racked up more than two and half times as many known attacks as ALPHV, its closest rival.

At this stage we have no idea how serious the damage to LockBit is, and law enforcement is only claiming that the group has been “disrupted”. However, even if that disruption isn’t fatal, it will doubtless raise serious questions among LockBit’s criminal associates.

LockBit sells ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) to “affiliates”, criminal gangs who use the service to carry out ransomware attacks. Even if LockBit can rebuild its infrastructure elsewhere those affiliates now have every reason to question its credibility.

The takedown comes just two months after LockBit’s biggest rival, ALPHV, also suffered a serious mauling at the hands of international law enforcement, before staggering back to its feet.

How to avoid ransomware

• Block common forms of entry. Create a plan for patching vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems quickly; and disable or harden remote access like RDP and VPNs.
• Prevent intrusions. Stop threats early before they can even infiltrate or infect your endpoints. Use endpoint security software that can prevent exploits and malware used to deliver ransomware.
• Detect intrusions. Make it harder for intruders to operate inside your organization by segmenting networks and assigning access rights prudently. Use EDR or MDR to detect unusual activity before an attack occurs.
• Stop malicious encryption. Deploy Endpoint Detection and Response software like ThreatDown EDR that uses multiple different detection techniques to identify ransomware, and ransomware rollback to restore damaged system files.
• Create offsite, offline backups. Keep backups offsite and offline, beyond the reach of attackers. Test them regularly to make sure you can restore essential business functions swiftly.
• Don’t get attacked twice. Once you’ve isolated the outbreak and stopped the first attack, you must remove every trace of the attackers, their malware, their tools, and their methods of entry, to avoid being attacked again.

You can learn more about the threat of big game ransomware like LockBit and ALPHV in our 2024 State of Malware report.

CISA (the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency) has issued a cybersecurity advisory after the discovery of documents containing host and user information of a state government organization’s network environment—including metadata—on a dark web brokerage site.

An attacker managed to compromise network administrator credentials through the account of a former employee of the organization. The attacker managed to authenticate to an internal virtual private network (VPN) access point, further navigate the victim’s on-premises environment, and execute various lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) queries against a domain controller.

CISA suspects that the account details fell in the hands of the attacker through a data breach. This would not have posed a problem if the account had been disabled when the employee left. But the account still had access with administrative privileges to two virtualized servers including SharePoint and the workstation.

The incident responders’ logs revealed the attacker first connected from an unknown virtual machine (VM) to the victim’s on-premises environment via internet protocol (IP) addresses within their internal VPN range.

On the SharePoint server, the attacker obtained global domain administrator credentials that were stored locally on the server. This account also provided the attacker with access to the on-premises Active Directory (AD) and Azure AD.

The attacker executed LDAP queries to collect user, host, and trust relationship information. The results of these queries are believed to have been among the information that was offered for sale.

Mitigation advice

When an employee leaves there may be several possible reasons not to immediately remove all their accounts. But you should at least remove their privileges as soon as possible and change the password.

The CISA advisory lists several points of advice about user accounts:

• Review current administrator accounts and only maintain those that are essential for network management.
• Restrict the use of multiple administrator accounts for one user.
• Create separate administrator accounts for on-premises and Azure environments to segment access.
• Implement the principle of least privilege and grant only access to what is necessary. It makes sense to revoke privileges after the task they were needed for is done.
• Use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA). The only widely available phishing-resistant authentication is FIDO/WebAuthn authentication.

More general tips are:

• Account and group policies: Set up a robust and continuous user management process to ensure accounts of offboarded employees are removed and can no longer access the network.
• Awareness of your environment: Maintain a robust asset management policy through comprehensive documentation of assets, tracking current version information to maintain awareness of outdated software, and mapping assets to business and critical functions.
• Patching procedures: If you do not have a Vulnerability and Patch Management solution, establish a routine patching cycle for all operating systems, applications, and software.
• Monitoring and logging: It’s essential to keep an eye on what is happening in your environment so you are aware of atypical events and logs that can help you figure out what happened exactly.

Our business solutions remove all remnants of ransomware and prevent you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• GoldPickaxe Trojan steals your face!
• Microsoft Exchange vulnerability actively exploited
• Massive utility scam campaign spreads via online ads
• Facebook Marketplace users’ stolen data offered for sale
• How ransomware changed in 2023
• Malwarebytes crushes malware all the time
• Update now! Microsoft fixes two zero-days on February Patch Tuesday
• TheTruthSpy stalkerware, still insecure, still leaking data
• Remote Monitoring & Management software used in phishing attacks
• Patch now! Roundcube mail servers are being actively exploited
• Warzone RAT infrastructure seized
• Ransomware review: February 2024
• If only you had to worry about malware, with Jason Haddix: Lock and Code S05E04
• AI-generated voices in robocalls are illegal, rules FCC

Stay safe!

Our business solutions remove all remnants of ransomware and prevent you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.

Well, the GoldPickaxe Trojan does not literally steal your face, but it does steal an image of your face in order to be able to identify as you.

Researchers have found a family of Trojans, attributed to a financially motivated Chinese group, which come in versions for iOS and Android.

Cybercriminals try to trick victims into scanning their faces along with identification documents. The victims are approached through phishing and smishing messages claiming to be from local governments or other trusted sources. They ask the target to install a fake government service app.

At this stage there is a crossroads where Android and iOS infections are different. While Android users go straight to the malicious app, due to measures taken by Apple the criminals ask the iOS users to install a disguised Mobile Device Management (MDM) profile. MDM allows a controller to remotely configure devices by sending profiles and commands to the device. As such MDM offers a wide range of features such as remote wipe, device tracking, and application management, which the cybercriminals take advantage of to install malicious applications and obtain the information they need.

The criminals then request that the victim take a photo of an official ID and scan their face with the app. Additionally, the criminals request the target’s phone number in order to get more details about them, particularly their bank accounts.

Once the criminals have a scan of the face they can use artificial intelligence (AI) to perform face-swaps. Face swapping is a technique that allows you to replace faces in images with others.

With the face swap and the photo of the ID the criminals can identify themselves as the victim to the victim’s bank and withdraw funds from their account. Many financial organizations use facial recognition for transaction verification and login authentication. Although the researchers found no evidence that bank fraud was the goal of the cybercriminals, their story was confirmed by warnings from the Thai police.

Although this group is mainly active in Asia, more precisely in Thailand, it makes sense to expect such a successful method to be copied.

Malwarebytes and ThreatDown solutions detect the GoldPickaxe Trojan as Android/Trojan.Agent.prn1.

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.

As it turns out, there was another actively exploited vulnerability included in Microsoft’s patch Tuesday updates for February.

When Microsoft said in its update guide for CVE-2024-21410 that the vulnerability was likely to be exploited by attackers, they weren’t kidding. Soon after they changed the status to “Exploitation Detected”.

Today, I was alerted to the fact after spotting a warning by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) about the same vulnerability, Something the BSI does not do lightly.

The Exchange vulnerability is listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database as CVE-2024-21410, an elevation of privilege vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10.

Microsoft’s description of the vulnerability is a bit more revealing:

“An attacker could target an NTLM client such as Outlook with an NTLM credentials-leaking type vulnerability. The leaked credentials can then be relayed against the Exchange server to gain privileges as the victim client and to perform operations on the Exchange server on the victim’s behalf.”

In a Windows network, NTLM (New Technology LAN Manager) is a suite of Microsoft security protocols intended to provide authentication, integrity, and confidentiality to users. An attacker being able to impersonate a legitimate user could prove to be catastrophic.

Microsoft Exchange Servers, and mail servers in general, are central communication nodes in every organization and as such they are attractive targets for cybercriminals. Being able to perform a pass-the-hash attack would provide an attacker with a paved way into the heart of the network.

As part of the update, Microsoft has enabled Extended Protection for Authentication (EPA) by default with the Exchange Server 2019 Cumulative Update 14 (CU14). Without the protection enabled, an attacker can target Exchange Server to relay leaked NTLM credentials from other targets (for example Outlook).

If you are running Exchange Server 2019 CU13 or earlier and you have previously run the script that enables NTLM credentials Relay Protections then you are protected from this vulnerability. However, Microsoft strongly suggests installing the latest cumulative update.

Last year, Microsoft introduced Extended Protection support as an optional feature for Exchange Server 2016 CU23.

If you are unsure whether your organization has configured Extended Protection, you can use the latest version of the Exchange Server Health Checker script. The script will provide you with an overview of the Extended Protection status of your server.

Our business solutions remove all remnants of ransomware and prevent you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.