Lock and Code Malwarebytes

Like the grade-school dweeb who reminds their teacher to assign tonight’s homework, or the power-tripping homeowner who threatens every neighbor with an HOA citation, the ransomware group ALPHV can now add itself to a shameful roster of pathetic, little tattle-tales.
In November, the ransomware gang ALPHV, which also goes by the name Black Cat, notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission about the Costa Mesa-based software company MeridianLink, alleging that the company had failed to notify the government about a data breach. Under newly announced rules by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), public companies will be expected to notify the government agency about “material cybersecurity incidents” within four days of determining whether such an incident could have impacted the company’s stock prices or any investment decisions from the public.
According to ALPHV, MeridianLink had violated that rule. But how did ALPHV know about this alleged breach?
Simple. They claimed to have done it.
“It has come to our attention that MeridianLink, in light of a significant breach compromising customer data and operational information, has failed to file the requisite disclosure under Item 1.05 of Form 8-K within the stipulated four business days, as mandated by the new SEC rules,” wrote ALPHV in a complaint that the group claimed to have filed with the US government.
The victim, MeridianLink, refuted the claims. According to a MeridianLink spokesperson, while the company confirmed a cybersecurity incident, it denied the severity of the incident.
“Based on our investigation to date, we have identified no evidence of unauthorized access to our production platforms, and the incident has caused minimal business interruption,” a MeridianLink spokesperson said at the time. “If we determine that any consumer personal information was involved in this incident, we will provide notifications as required by law.”
This week on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to Recorded Future intelligence analyst Allan Liska about what ALPHV could hope to accomplish with its SEC complaint, whether similar threats have been made in the past under other regulatory regime, and what organizations everywhere should know about ransomware attacks going into the new year. One big takeaway, Liska said, is that attacks are getting bigger, bolder, and brasher.
“There are no protections anymore,” Liska said. “For a while, some ransomware actors were like, ‘No, we won’t go after hospitals, or we won’t do this, or we won’t do that.’ Those protections all seem to have flown out the window, and they’ll go after anything and anyone that will make them money. It doesn’t matter how small they are or how big they are.”
Liska continued:
“We’ve seen ransomware actors go after food banks. You’re not going to get a ransom from a food bank. Don’t do that.”Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.
You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.
For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.
Show notes and credits:
Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0...

A worrying trend is cropping up amongst Americans, particularly within Generation Z—they're spying on each other more.
Whether reading someone's DMs, rifling through a partner's text messages, or even rummaging through the bags and belongings of someone else, Americans enjoy keeping tabs on one another, especially when they're in a relationship. According to recent research from Malwarebytes, a shocking 49% of Gen Zers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “Being able to track my spouse's/significant other's location when they are away is extremely important to me.”
On the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we've repeatedly tackled the issue of surveillance, from the NSA's mass communications surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden, to the targeted use of Pegasus spyware against human rights dissidents and political activists, to the purchase of privately-collected location data by state law enforcement agencies across the country. But the type of surveillance we're talking about today is different. It isn't so much "Big Brother"—a concept introduced in the socio-dystopian novel 1984 by author George Orwell. It's "Little Brother."
As far back as 2010, in a piece titled “Little Brother is Watching,” author Walter Kirn wrote for the New York Times:
 “As the Internet proves every day, it isn’t some stern and monolithic Big Brother that we have to reckon with as we go about our daily lives, it’s a vast cohort of prankish Little Brothers equipped with devices that Orwell, writing 60 years ago, never dreamed of and who are loyal to no organized authority. The invasion of privacy — of others’ privacy but also our own, as we turn our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means — has been democratized.”
Little Brother is us, recording someone else on our phones and then posting it on social media. Little Brother is us, years ago, Facebook stalking someone because they’re a college crush. Little Brother is us, watching a Ring webcam of a delivery driver, including when they are mishandling a package but also when they are doing a stupid little dance that we requested so we could post it online and get little dopamine hits from the Likes. Little Brother is our anxieties being soothed by watching the shiny blue GPS dots that represent our husbands and our wives, driving back from work.
Little Brother isn't just surveillance. It is increasingly popular, normalized, and accessible surveillance. And it's creeping its way into more and more relationships every day. 
So, what can stop it? 
Today, we speak with our guests, Malwarebytes security evangelist Mark Stockley and Malwarebytes Labs editor-in-chief Anna Brading, about the apparent "appeal" of Little Brother surveillance, whether the tenets of privacy can ever fully defeat that surveillance, and what the possible merits of this surveillance could be, including, as Stockley suggested, in revealing government abuses of power. 
"My question to you is, as with all forms of technology, there are two very different sides for this. So is...

In September, the Las Vegas casino and hotel operator MGM Resorts became a trending topic on social media... but for all the wrong reasons. A TikTok user posted a video taken from inside the casino floor of the MGM Grand—the company's flagship hotel complex near the southern end of the Las Vegas strip—that didn't involve the whirring of slot machines or the sirens and buzzers of sweepstake earnings, but, instead, row after row of digital gambling machines with blank, non-functional screens. That same TikTok user commented on their own post that it wasn't just errored-out gambling machines that were causing problems—hotel guests were also having trouble getting into their own rooms.
As the user said online about their own experience: “Digital keys weren’t working. Had to get physical keys printed. They doubled booked our room so we walked in on someone.”
The trouble didn't stop there.
A separate photo shared online allegedly showed what looked like a Walkie-Talkie affixed to an elevator's handrail. Above the device was a piece of paper and a message written by hand: “For any elevator issues, please use the radio for support.”  
As the public would soon learn, MGM Resorts was the victim of a cyberattack, reportedly carried out by a group of criminals called Scattered Spider, which used the ALPHV ransomware.
It was one of the most publicly-exposed cyberattacks in recent history. But just a few days before the public saw the end result, the same cybercriminal group received a reported $15 million ransom payment from a separate victim situated just one and a half miles away.
On September 14, Caesar’s Entertainment reported in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it, too, had suffered a cyber breach, and according to reporting from CNBC, it received a $30 million ransom demand, which it then negotiated down by about 50 percent.
The social media flurry, the TikTok videos, the comments and confusion from customers, the ghost-town casino floors captured in photographs—it all added up to something strange and new: Vegas was breached. 
But how? 
Though follow-on reporting suggests a particularly effective social engineering scam, the attacks themselves revealed a more troubling, potential vulnerability for businesses everywhere, which is that a company's budget—and its relative ability to devote resources to cybersecurity—doesn't necessarily insulate it from attacks. 
Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with James Fair, senior vice president of IT Services at the managed IT services company Executech, about whether businesses are taking cybersecurity seriously enough, which industries he's seen pushback from for initial cybersecurity recommendations (and why), and the frustration of seeing some companies only take cybersecurity seriously after a major attack. 
"How many do we have to see? MGM got hit, you guys. Some of the biggest targets out there—people who have more cybersecurity budget than people can imagine—got hit. So, what are you waiting for?"Tune in today.
You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you...

What are you most worried about online? And what are you doing to stay safe? 
Depending on who you are, those could be very different answers, but for teenagers and members of Generation Z, the internet isn't so scary because of traditional threats like malware and viruses. Instead, the internet is scary because of what it can expose. To Gen Z, a feared internet is one that is vindictive and cruel—an internet that reveals private information that Gen Z fears could harm their relationships with family and friends, damage their reputations, and even lead to their being bullied and physically harmed. 
Those are some of the findings from Malwarebytes' latest research into the cybersecurity and online privacy beliefs and behaviors of people across the United States and Canada this year.
Titled "Everyone's afraid of the internet and no one's sure what to do about it," Malwarebytes' new report shows that 81 percent of Gen Z worries about having personal, private information exposed—like their sexual orientations, personal struggles, medical history, and relationship issues (compared to 75 percent of non-Gen Zers). And 61 percent of Gen Zers worry about having embarrassing or compromising photos or videos shared online (compared to 55% of non Gen Zers). Not only that, 36 percent worry about being bullied because of that info being exposed, while 34 percent worry about being physically harmed. For those outside of Gen Z, those numbers are a lot lower—only 22 percent worry about bullying, and 27 percent worry about being physically harmed.
Does this mean Gen Z is uniquely careful to prevent just that type of information from being exposed online? Not exactly. They talk more frequently to strangers online, they more frequently share personal information on social media, and they share photos and videos on public forums more than anyone—all things that leave a trail of information that could be gathered against them.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we drill down into what, specifically, a Bay Area teenager is afraid of when using the internet, and what she does to stay safe. Visiting the Lock and Code podcast for the second year in the row is Nitya Sharma, discussing AI "sneak attacks," political disinformation campaigns, the unannounced location tracking of Snapchat, and why she simply cannot be bothered about malware. 
"I know that there's a threat of sharing information with bad people and then abusing it, but I just don't know what you would do with it. Show up to my house and try to kill me?" Tune in today for the full conversation.
You can read our full report here: "Everyone's afraid of the internet and no one's sure what to do about it."
You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.
For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at a...

When you think of the modern tools that most invade your privacy, what do you picture?
There's the obvious answers, like social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram. There's email and "everything" platforms like Google that can track your locations, your contacts, and, of course, your search history. There's even the modern web itself, rife with third-party cookies that track your browsing activity across websites so your information can be bundled together into an ad-friendly profile. 
But here's a surprise answer with just as much validity: Cars. 
A team of researchers at Mozilla which has reviewed the privacy and data collection policies of various product categories for several years now, named "Privacy Not Included," recently turned their attention to modern-day vehicles, and what they found shocked them. Cars are, to put it shortly, a privacy nightmare. 
According to the team's research, Nissan says it can collect “sexual activity” information about consumers. Kia says it can collect information about a consumer's “sex life.” Subaru passengers allegedly consent to the collection of their data by simply being in the vehicle. Volkswagen says it collects data like a person's age and gender and whether they're using your seatbelt, and it can use that information for targeted marketing purposes. 
But those are just some of the highlights from the Privacy Not Included team. Explains Zoë MacDonald, content creator for the research team: 
"We were pretty surprised by the data points that the car companies say they can collect... including social security number, information about your religion, your marital status, genetic information, disability status... immigration status, race. And of course, as you said.. one of the most surprising ones for a lot of people who read our research is the sexual activity data."
Today on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with MacDonald and Jen Caltrider, Privacy Not Included team lead, about the data that cars can collect, how that data can be shared, how it can be used, and whether consumers have any choice in the matter.
We also explore the booming revenue stream that car manufacturers are tapping into by not only collecting people's data, but also packaging it together for targeted advertising. With so many data pipelines being threaded together, Caltrider says the auto manufacturers can even make "inferences" about you.  
"What really creeps me out [is] they go on to say that they can take all the information they collect about you from the cars, the apps, the connected services, and everything they can gather about you from these third party sources," Caltrider said, "and they can combine it into these things they call 'inferences' about you about things like your intelligence, your abilities, your predispositions, your characteristics." 
Caltrider continued:
"And that's where it gets really creepy because I just imagine a car company knowing so much about me that they've determined how smart I am."Tune in today. 

In 2022, Malwarebytes investigated the blurry, shifting idea of “identity” on the internet, and how online identities are not only shaped by the people behind them, but also inherited by the internet’s youngest users, children. Children have always inherited some of their identities from their parents—consider that two of the largest indicators for political and religious affiliation in the US are, no surprise, the political and religious affiliations of someone’s parents—but the transfer of online identity poses unique risks. 
When parents create email accounts for their kids, do they also teach their children about strong passwords? When parents post photos of their children online, do they also teach their children about the safest ways to post photos of themselves and others? When parents create a Netflix viewing profile on a child's iPad, are they prepared for what else a child might see online? Are parents certain that a kid is ready to watch before they can walk?
Those types of questions drove a joint report that Malwarebytes published last year, based on a survey of 2,000 people in North America. That research showed that, broadly, not enough children and teenagers trust their parents to support them online, and not enough parents know exactly how to give the support their children need.
But stats and figures can only tell so much of the story, which is why last year, Lock and Code host David Ruiz spoke with a Bay Area high school graduate about her own thoughts on the difficulties of growing up online. Lock and Code is re-airing that episode this week because, in less than one month, Malwarebytes is releasing a follow-on report about behaviors, beliefs, and blunders in online privacy and cybersecurity. And as part of that report, Lock and Code is bringing back the same guest as last year, Nitya Sharma. 
Before then, we are sharing with listeners our prior episode that aired in 2022 about the difficulties that an everyday teenager faces online, including managing her time online, trying to meet friends and complete homework, the traps of trading online interaction with in-person socializing, and what she would do differently with her children, if she ever started a family, in preparing them for the Internet.
Tune in today. 
You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.
For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.
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)