A week in security (December 21- December 27)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs we warned our readers about not so festive social media scams, how Emotet returned just in time for Christmas, we tried out some free online games your kids are playing and here’s what happened, and our VideoBytes episode talked about what penetration testing tools malware gangs love to use and why they are better than what you can get on the black market.

Other cybersecurity news:

• Cybercriminals issued a fake mobile version of Cyberpunk 2077 that’s actually ransomware. (Source: TechSpot)
• The Trump administration is pushing to make major adjustments to the Pentagon organizations charged with cybersecurity and intelligence. (Source: CNN)
• An international takedown of a virtual private network (VPN), dubbed Operation Nova ended an organization engaged in bulletproof hosting. (Source: US DoJ)
• Europol and the European Commission are launching a new decryption platform to help law enforcement agencies decrypt data that have been obtained as part of a criminal investigation. (Source: GovInfoSecurity)
• Hacker publishes stolen email and mailing addresses of 270,000 Ledger cryptocurrency wallet users. (Source: Hot for Security)
• The group behind the SolarWinds hack also tried to compromise security firm CrowdStrike. (Source: engadget)
• China used stolen data to track CIA operatives in Africa and Europe since around 2013. (Source: Fox Business)
• Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla unite to ban Kazakhstan‘s citizen-tracking certificate. (Source: TechSpot)
• A large scale phishing scam is underway that pretends to be a security notice from Chase stating that fraudulent activity has been detected and caused the recipient’s account to be blocked. (Source: BleepingComputer)
• SolarWinds releases known attack timeline, new data suggests hackers may have done a dummy run last year. (Source: The Register)

Stay safe, everyone!

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