Digital security is about so much more than malware. That wasn’t always the case. 

When I started Malwarebytes more than 16 years ago, malware was the primary security concern—the annoying pop-ups, the fast-spreading viruses, the catastrophic worms—and throughout our company’s history, Malwarebytes routinely excelled against this threat. We caught malware that other vendors missed, and we pioneered malware detection methods beyond the signature-based industry standard.  

I’m proud of our success, but it wasn’t just our technology that got us here. It was our attitude.  

At Malwarebytes, we believe that everyone has the right to a secure digital life, no matter their budget, which is why our malware removal tool was free when it launched and remains free today. Our ad blocking tool, Browser Guard is also available to all without a charge. This was very much not the norm in cybersecurity, but I believe it was—and will always be—the right thing to do.  

Today, I am proud to add to our legacy of empowering individuals regardless of their wallet by releasing a new, free tool that better educates and prepares people for modern threats that abuse exposed data to target online identities. I’d like to welcome everyone to try our new Digital Footprint Portal.  

See your exposed data in our new Digital Footprint Portal.

By simply entering an email address, anyone can discover what information of theirs is available on the dark web to hackers, cybercriminals, and scammers. From our safe portal, everyday people can view past password breaches, active social media profiles, potential leaks of government ID info, and more.  

More than a decade ago, Malwarebytes revolutionized the antivirus industry by prioritizing the security of all individuals. Today, Malwarebytes is now also revolutionizing digital life protection by safeguarding the data that serves as the backbone of your identity, your privacy, your reputation, and your well-being online.  

Why data matters 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read that “data is the new oil” without reading any explanations as to why people should care.  

Here’s my attempt at clarifying the matter: Too much of our lives are put online without our control.  

Creating a social media account requires handing over your full name and birthdate. Completing any online shopping order requires detailing your address and credit card number. Getting approved for a mortgage requires the exchange of several documents that reveal your salary and your employer. Buying a plane ticket could necessitate your passport info. Messaging your doctor could involve sending a few photos that you’d like to keep private.  

As we know, a lot of this data is valuable to advertisers—this is what pundits focus on when they invoke the value of “oil” in discussing modern data collection—but this data is also valuable to an entirely separate group that has learned to abuse private information in novel and frightening ways: Cybercriminals.  

Long ago, cybercriminals would steal your username and password by fooling you with an urgently worded phishing email. Today, while this tactic is still being used, there’s a much easier path to data theft. Cybercriminals can simply buy your information on the dark web.  

That information can include credit card numbers—where the risk of financial fraud is obvious—and even more regulated forms of identity, like Social Security Numbers and passport info. Equipped with enough forms of “proof,” online thieves can fool a bank into routing your money elsewhere or trick a lender into opening a new line of credit in your name.  

Where the risk truly lies, however, is in fraudulent account access.  

If you’ve ever been involved in a company’s data breach (which is extremely likely), there’s a chance that the username and password that were associated with that data breach can be bought on the dark web for just pennies. Even though each data breach involves just one username and password for each account, cybercriminals know that many people frequently reuse passwords across multiple accounts. After illegally purchasing your login credentials that were exposed in one data breach, thieves will use those same credentials to try to log into more popular, sensitive online accounts, like your online banking, your email, and your social media.  

If any of these attempts at digital safe-cracking works, the potential for harm is enormous.  

With just your email login and password, cybercriminals can ransack photos that are stored in an associated cloud drive and use those for extortion. They can search for attachments that reveal credit card numbers, passport info, and ID cards and then use that information to fool a bank into letting them access your funds. They can pose as you in bogus emails and make fraudulent requests for money from your family and friends. They can even change your password and lock you out forever. 

This is the future of personal cybercrime, and as a company committed to stopping cyberthreats everywhere, we understand that we have a role to play in protecting people.  

We will always stop malware. We will always advise to create and use unique passwords and multifactor authentication. But today, we’re expanding our responsibility and helping you truly see the modern threats that could leverage your data.  

With the Digital Footprint Portal, who you are online is finally visible to you—not just cybercriminals. Use it today to understand where your data has been leaked, what passwords have been exposed, and how you can protect yourself online.  

Digitally safe 

Malwarebytes and the cybersecurity industry at large could not have predicted today’s most pressing threats against online identities and reputations, but that doesn’t mean we get to ignore them. The truth is that Malwarebytes was founded with a belief broader than anti-malware protection. Malwarebytes was founded to keep people safe.  

As cybercriminals change their tactics, as scammers needle their way onto online platforms, and as thieves steal and abuse the sensitive data that everyone places online, Malwarebytes will always stay one step ahead. The future isn’t about worms, viruses, Trojans, scams, pig butchering, or any other single scam. It’s about holistic digital life protection. We’re excited to help you get there.  

It takes a little to receive a lot of online hate today, from simply working as a school administrator to playing a role in a popular movie or video game.

But these moments of personal crisis have few, immediate solutions, as the current proposals to curb and stem online harassment zero in on the systemic—such as changes in data privacy laws to limit the personal information that can be weaponized online or calls for major social media platforms to better moderate hateful content and its spread.

Such structural shifts can take years (if they take place at all), which can leave today’s victims feeling helpless.

There are, however, a few steps that everyday people can take, starting now, to better protect themselves against online hate and harassment campaigns. And thankfully, none of them involve “just getting off the internet,” a suggestion that, according to Leigh Honeywell, is both ineffective and unwanted.

“The [idea that the] answer to being bullied is that you shouldn’t be able to participate in public life—I don’t think that’s okay,” said Honeywell, CEO and co-founder of the digital safety consultancy Tall Poppy.

Speaking to me on the Lock and Code podcast last month, Honeywell explained that Tall Poppy’s defense strategies to online harassment incorporate best practices from Honeywell’s prior industry—cybersecurity.

Here are a few steps that people can proactively take to limit online harassment before it happens.

Get good at Googling yourself

One of the first steps in protecting yourself from online harassment is finding out what information about you is already available online. This is because, as Honeywell said, much of that information can be weaponized for abuse.

Picture an angry diner posting a chef’s address on Yelp alongside a poor review, or a complete stranger sending in a fake bomb threat to a school address, or a real-life bully scraping the internet for embarrassing photos of someone they want to harass.  

All this information could be available online, and the best way to know if it exists is to do the searching yourself.

As for where to start?

“First name, last name, city name, or other characteristics about yourself,” Honeywell said, listing what, specifically, to search online.

It’s important to understand that the online search itself may not bring immediate results, but it will likely reveal active online profiles on platforms like LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram. If those profiles are public, an angry individual could scrape relevant information and use it to their advantage. Even a LinkedIn profile could be weaponized by someone who calls in fake complaints to a person’s employer, trying to have them fired from their position.

In combing through the data that you can find about yourself online, Honeywell said people should focus on what someone else could do with that data.

“If an adversary was trying to find out information about me, what would they find?” Honeywell said. “If they had that information, what would they do with it?”

Take down what you can

You’ve found what an adversary might use against you online. Now it’s time to take it down.

Admittedly, this can be difficult in the United States, as Americans are not protected by a national data privacy law that gives them the right to request their data be deleted from certain websites, platforms, and data brokers.

Where Americans could find some help, however, is from online resources and services that streamline the data removal process that is enshrined in some state laws. These tools, like the iOS app Permission Slip, released by Consumer Reports in 2022, show users what types of information companies are collecting about them, and give user the opportunity to request that such data be deleted.

Separately, Google released on online tool in 2023 where users can request that certain search results that contain their personal information be removed. You can learn more about the tool, called “Results about you,” here.

When all else fails, Honeywell said that people shouldn’t be afraid to escalate the situation to their state’s regulators. That could include filing an official complaint with a State Attorney General, or with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the Federal Trade Commission.

“It sounds like the big guns,” Honeywell said, “but I think it’s important that, as individuals, we do what we can to hold the companies that are creating this mess accountable.”

Lock down your accounts

If an adversary can’t find your information through an online search, they may try to steal that information by hacking into your accounts, Honeywell said.

“If I’m mad at David, I’m going to hack into David’s email and share personal information,” Honeywell said. “That’s a fairly standard way that we see some of the worst online harassment attacks escalate.”

While hackers may have plenty of novel tools at their disposal, the best defenses you can implement today are the use of unique passwords and multifactor authentication.

Let’s first talk about unique passwords.

Each and every single one of your online accounts—from your email, to your social media profiles, to your online banking—should have a strong, unique password. And because you likely have dozens upon dozens of online accounts to manage, you should keep track of all those passwords with a devoted password manager.

Using unique passwords is one of the best defenses to company data breaches that expose user login credentials. Once those credentials are available on the dark web, hackers will buy those credentials so they can attempt to use them to gain access to other online accounts. You can prevent those efforts going forward by refusing to repeat passwords across any of your online accounts.

Now, start using multifactor authentication, if you’re not already.

Multifactor authentication is offered by most major companies and services today, from your bank, to your email, to your medical provider. By using multifactor authentication, also called MFA or 2FA, you will be required to “authenticate” yourself with more than just your password. This means that when you enter your username and password onto a site or app, you will also be prompted with entering a separate code that is, in many cases, sent to your phone via text or an app.

MFA is one of the strongest protections to password abuse, ensuring that, even if a hacker has your username and password, they still can’t access your account because they will not have the additional authentication that is required to complete a login.

In the world of cybersecurity, these two defense practices are among the gold standard in stopping cyberattacks. In the world of online harassment, they’re much the same—they work to prevent the abuse of your online accounts.

Here to help

Online harassment is an isolating experience, but protecting yourself against it can be quite the opposite. Honeywell suggested that, for those who feel overwhelmed or who do not know where to start, they can find a friend to help.

“Buddy up,” Honeywell said. “If you’ve got a friend who’s good at Googling, work on each other’s profile, identify what information is out there about you.”

Honeywell also recommended going through data takedown requests together, as the processes can be “extremely tedious” and some of the services that promise to remove your information from the internet are really only trying to sell you a service.

If you’re still wondering what information about you is online and you aren’t comfortable with your way around Google, Malwarebytes has a new, free tool that reveals what information of yours is available on the dark web and across the internet at large. The Digital Footprint Portal, released in April, provides free, unlimited scans for everyone, and it can serve as a strong first step in understanding what information of yours needs to be locked down.

To learn what information about you has been exposed online, use our free scanner below.

PAFACA SueTok: U.S. Courts “likely” to rule whether new law is constitutional—or even practical.

The post TikTok Ban — ByteDance Sues US to Kill Bill appeared first on Security Boulevard.

In the ever-evolving world of ransomware, it’s getting easier for threat groups to launch attacks – as evidence by the growing number of incidents – but more difficult to make a profit. Organizations’ cyber-defenses are getting more resilient, decryptors that enable victims to regain control of their data, and law enforcement crackdowns on high-profile cybercrime..

The post Ransomware Attacks are Up, but Profits are Down: Chainalysis appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Chinese crooks are running a global network of more than 75,000 fake online shops to steal credit card data and process fraudulent payments.

The post Massive Online Shopping Scam Racks Up 850,000 Victims appeared first on Security Boulevard.

DUDE! You’re Getting Phished.

Dell customer data from the past six (or more?) years was stolen. It looks like someone sold scads of personal information to the highest bidder.

The post Dell Hell: 49 Million Customers’ Information Leaked appeared first on Security Boulevard.

The tech giant says the information stolen doesn't represent a significant risk to users, but cybersecurity experts disagree.

The post Dell Data Breach Could Affect 49 Million Customers appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Bad actors are always ready to exploit political strife to their own ends. Right now, they’re doing so with the conflict in the Middle East. A holistic defense against influence networks requires collaboration between government, technology companies and security research organizations.

The post Emerald Divide Uses GenAI to Exploit Social, Political Divisions in Israel Using Disinformation appeared first on Security Boulevard.

In this first-ever in-person recording of Shared Security, Tom and Kevin, along with special guest Matt Johansen from Reddit, discuss their experience at the RSA conference in San Francisco, including their walk-through of ‘enhanced security’ and the humorous misunderstanding that ensued. The conversation moves to the ubiquity of AI and machine learning buzzwords at the […]

The post Live at RSA: AI Hype, Enhanced Security, and the Future of Cybersecurity Tools appeared first on Shared Security Podcast.

The post Live at RSA: AI Hype, Enhanced Security, and the Future of Cybersecurity Tools appeared first on Security Boulevard.

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Будет! Russian ransomware rascals riled a Roman Catholic healthcare organization.

The post FBI/CISA Warning: ‘Black Basta’ Ransomware Gang vs. Ascension Health appeared first on Security Boulevard.

It sounds official — like it might be the subject of the next action-packed, government espionage, Jason Bourne-style thriller. Or maybe put it before the name of a racy city and have your next hit crime series. A history of mysterious aliases like “official use only,” “law enforcement sensitive,” and “sensitive but unclassified” only adds...

The post Understanding CUI: What It Is and Guidelines for Its Management appeared first on Hyperproof.

The post Understanding CUI: What It Is and Guidelines for Its Management appeared first on Security Boulevard.

May is mental health awareness month! In pursuing help or advice for mental health struggles (beyond just this month, of course), users may download and use mental health apps. Mental health apps are convenient and may be cost effective for many people.

However, while these apps may provide mental health resources and benefits, they may be harvesting considerable amounts of information and sharing health-related data with third parties for advertising and tracking purposes.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to serve as legal or medical advice. This post is for informational purposes only. If you are experiencing an emergency, please contact emergency services in your jurisdiction.

Understanding HIPAA

Many people have misconceptions about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and disclosure/privacy.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HIPAA is a "federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient's consent or knowledge." There is a HIPAA Privacy Rule and a HIPAA Security Rule.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states the Privacy Rule standards "address the use and disclosure of individuals' health information by entities subject to the Privacy Rule." It's important to understand that the Privacy Rule covers entities subject to it.

Entities include healthcare providers, health plans, health clearing houses, and business associates (such as billing specialists or data analysts). Many mental health apps aren't classified as either; also, though there are a few subject to HIPAA, some have been documented not to actually be compliant with HIPAA rules.

What does this mean? Many mental health apps are not considered covered entities and are therefore "exempt" (for lack of better word) from HIPAA. As such, these apps appear to operate in a legal "gray area," but that doesn't mean their data practices are ethical or even follow proper basic information security principles for safeguarding data...

Even apps that collect PHI information protected by HIPAA may still share/use your information that doesn't fall under HIPAA protections.

Mental health apps collect a wealth of personal information

Naturally, data collected by apps falling under the "mental health" umbrella varies widely (as do the apps that fall under this umbrella.)

However, most have users create accounts and fill out some version of an "intake" questionnaire prior to using/enrolling in services. These questionnaires vary by service, but may collect information such as:

• name
• address
• email
• phone number
• employer information

Account creation generally and at minimum requires user email and a password, which is indeed routine.

It's important to note your email address can serve as a particularly unique identifier - especially if you use the same email address everywhere else in your digital life. If you use the same email address everywhere, it's easier to track and connect your accounts and activities across the web and your digital life.

Account creation may also request alternative contact information, such as a phone number, or supplemental personal information such as your legal name. These can and often do serve as additional data points and identifiers.

It's also important to note that on the backend (usually in a database), your account may be assigned identifiers as well. In some cases, your account may also be assigned external identifiers - especially if information is shared with third parties.

Intake questionnaires can collect particularly sensitive information, such as (but not necessarily limited to):

• past mental health experiences
• age (potentially exact date of birth)
• gender identity information
• sexual orientation information
• other demographic information
• health insurance information (if relevant)
• relationship status

Question from BetterHelp intake questionnaire found in FTC complaint against BetterHelp

These points of sensitive information are rather intimate and can easily be used to identify users - and could be disasters if disclosed in a data breach or to third party platforms.

These unique and rather intimate data points can be used to exploit users in highly targeted marketing and advertising campaigns - or perhaps even used to facilitate scams and malware via advertising tools third parties who may receive such information provide to advertisers.

Note: If providing health insurance information, many services require an image of the card. Images can contain EXIF data that could expose a user's location and device information if not scrubbed prior to upload.

Information collection extends past user disclosure

Far more often than not, information collected by mental health apps extends past information a user may disclose in processes such as account creation or completing intake forms - these apps often harvest device information, frequently sending it off the device and to their own servers.

For example, here is a screenshot of the BetterHelp app's listing on the Apple App Store in MAY 2024:

The screenshot indicates BetterHelp uses your location and app usage data to "track you across apps and websites owned by other companies." We can infer from this statement that BetterHelp shares your location information and how you use the app with third parties, likely for targeted advertising and tracking purposes.

The screenshot also indicates your contact information, location information, usage data, and other identifiers are linked to your identity.

Note: Apple Privacy Labels in the App Store are self-reported by the developers of the app.

This is all reinforced in their updated privacy policy (25 APR 2024), where BetterHelp indicates they use external and internal identifiers, collect app and platform errors, and collect usage data of the app and platform:

In February 2020, an investigation revealed BetterHelp also harvested the metadata of messages exchanged between clients and therapists, sharing them with platforms like Facebook for advertising purposes. This was despite BetterHelp "encrypting communications between client and therapist" - they may have encrypted the actual message contents, but it appears information such as when a message was went, the receiver/recipient, and location information was available to the servers... and actively used/shared.

While this may not seem like a big deal at first glance - primarily because BetterHelp is not directly accessing/reading message contents - users should be aware that message metadata can give away a lot of information.

Cerebral, a mental health app that does fall under the HIPAA rules, also collects device-related data and location data, associating them with your identity:

According to this screenshot, Cerebral shares/uses app usage data with third parties, likely for marketing and advertising purposes. Specifically, they...

The post Mental Health Apps are Likely Collecting and Sharing Your Data appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Phish Ahoy! Hacker took advantage of Dell’s lack of anti-scraping defense.

The post Dell Hell Redux — More Personal Info Stolen by ‘Menelik’ appeared first on Security Boulevard.

One in three office workers who use GenAI admit to sharing customer info, employee details and financial data with the platforms. Are you worried yet?

The post Risks of GenAI Rising as Employees Remain Divided About its Use in the Workplace appeared first on Security Boulevard.

WTH? DPRK IT WFH: Justice Department says N. Korean hackers are getting remote IT jobs, posing as Americans.

The post North Korea IT Worker Scam Brings Malware and Funds Nukes appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Source: securityboulevard.com – Author: Richi Jennings Pictured: Several successful American IT professionals. The U.S. Justice Department says N. Korean hackers are getting remote IT jobs, posing as Americans. They’re funneling their pay into Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and likely leaving behind remote-access Trojans. Two have been arrested so far, with more suspects sought. In today’s SB Blogwatch, […]

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