Have you ever tried to open an “encrypted” email or an urgent document, only to realize with horror that your usual DOCX attachment is actually a file with the extension .docx.exe? Or maybe you received an email supposedly with an invoice, contract, or internal memo attached — only for the file to prove something entirely different from what it claimed to be? If so, you were likely targeted in a malware infection attempt.

Cybercriminals routinely disguise malicious files as harmless documents and archives, banking on recipients blindly clicking without checking the extension. Kaspersky experts analyzed the file formats most frequently deployed in malicious email blasts to reveal what really lurks behind these extensions — and how attackers weaponize them in their campaigns.

Important note: the extensions we’ll be discussing here are routinely used for completely legitimate files. For example, Windows executables normally end in .exe. However, we’re focusing specifically on scenarios where attackers disguise or spoof a file’s extension to pass it off as a totally different type of file.

What extensions are most commonly found in malware?

Our experts analyzed malicious email blasts from the beginning of 2026 to pinpoint the 15 most common dangerous file extensions.

.exe

.js

.html

.dll

.bat

.vbs

.xls

.pdf

.jse

.au3

.docx

.htm

.wsf

.scr

.lnk

Let’s take a look at what files with these extensions actually do under the hood.

Executable files

An executable file is a compiled computer program that’s ready to run. Once launched, a malicious executable can download additional payloads, alter system settings, steal user data, connect your device to external attacker-controlled servers, and much more. These are the most common executable extensions found in malicious email campaigns:

• .exe
• .dll
• .com
• .scr

.exe

The classic Windows executable extension. It powers every program you use daily, from web browsers and games to office suites and software installers.

By the way, attackers often wrap EXE malware in double extensions: invoice.docx.exe, report.pdf.exe, or even photo.jpg.exe. They take advantage of a default Windows setting: hiding extensions for known file types. Because this setting is turned on by default, users only see the first part of the file name — invoice.docx, report.pdf, or photo.jpg — and assume it’s just a normal document or image. But the second you open this trap file, the malware fires up.

.dll

Another common extension abused in malicious campaigns is .dll (dynamic-link library). These libraries hold functions that Windows programs frequently require while running, such as printing a document. This modular architecture prevents redundant code by letting multiple applications call on the exact same library for specific tasks. However, if an attacker replaces a legitimate library with an infected one, running any normal program that calls on it can trigger malicious code.

.com

While files with the .com extension have absolutely nothing to do with the web domain of the same name, cybercriminals likely count on victims mistaking these files for links in an unusual format. In reality, it’s a legacy Windows executable format.

While modern versions of Windows no longer rely on this file type, the operating system can still run and execute it, which makes opening one a very bad idea.

.scr

SCR files are screensavers — those idle Windows screen animations featuring abstract patterns, the iconic bouncing logo, or whatever else. Despite their harmless reputation, screensavers are essentially executables just like EXE files: once opened, they can install extra components or alter system settings all the same. In malicious campaigns, these files routinely masquerade as images, screenshots, or documents.

Scripts

Scripts are text files containing a sequence of commands that a computer runs automatically in order. They can download files, install and launch programs, modify security settings, and plenty more. Email attackers rely on the following script types most often:

• .js and .jse
• .bat
• .cmd
• .vbs
• .wsf
• .vbe
• .au3

.js and .jse

The .js and .jse extensions are used by JavaScript files. Most users associate JavaScript strictly with websites and don’t realize these files can run locally on their computer as standalone programs.

We recently wrote about CrystalX RAT, a remote access Trojan that logs keystrokes, steals clipboard contents, and injects malicious components into web browsers upon installation. Its JS scripts monitored cryptocurrency wallet addresses and silently swapped them with the attacker’s own to hijack transactions in real time.

.cmd and .bat

BAT and CMD files are designed to automate tasks in Windows and can execute virtually any command in the operating system. Launching a file like this can infect your computer with malware.

.vbs

Visual Basic Script files with the .vbs extension are a long-time favorite among cybercriminals. Attackers frequently use double extensions to disguise .vbs files as plain text documents, such as invoices, app installation guides, or emails. For example, in the early 2000s, the iconic ILOVEYOU worm spread via a VBS script, infecting millions of computers worldwide. Victims received an email with the subject line “ILOVEYOU”, but instead of a sweet confession, the attachment contained a malicious script. At its peak, this “romantic” worm had infected up to 10% of all internet-connected computers.

Web files

This category mainly includes .html, .htm, .hta and .svg files. Often these are phishing pages in disguise, designed to mimic login forms for email, cloud services, banking apps, and other platforms. Naturally, any credentials entered on these fake pages go straight to the attackers hunting for your accounts and money. Web files can also trigger malicious scripts and download additional payloads onto your system.

Archives

Cybercriminals routinely package malicious files inside archives (most commonly having .zip, .rar, and .7z extensions). These archives are often password-protected or encrypted to hinder content scanning. Additionally, attackers sometimes create intentionally corrupted archives with damaged data structures: basic security filters often stumble over broken files and skip scanning them altogether, whereas archive managers can automatically repair and unpack the contents anyway.

That’s why we recommend using advanced security solutions that can spot phishing emails and prevent you from launching dangerous files hidden inside archives.

PDF files (.pdf)

To many, PDF feels like a completely harmless file format — after all, what could go wrong with flight tickets, documents, and slide decks? But beyond static text and images, PDFs can host clickable links, forms, and even scripts.

Malicious code in a PDF is usually tucked away behind visual elements or embedded as hidden text. What’s more, the risk comes not just from the file itself, but also from the software you use to view it: for instance, attackers spent months exploiting a vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat that allowed them to execute malicious PDF files remotely. If you regularly work on PDF documents, make sure the JavaScript feature is disabled in your Adobe Acrobat. To do this, go to Preferences → JavaScript in the menu.

By the way, heavy users of AI agents and chatbots should keep in mind that AI frequently falls for prompt injections: hidden commands buried inside images, text, and web pages that the AI interprets as legitimate instructions, and executes without your knowledge.

LNK shortcuts (.lnk)

Files with the .lnk extension are standard Windows shortcuts that we use every day for quick access to apps and folders. By themselves, shortcuts don’t contain any software — they simply tell Windows what file to open or what command to run.

However, an attacker can give a shortcut any icon and any name they want, completely hiding its real destination. The moment a victim clicks the shortcut, the infection chain kicks off. The malicious code usually executes silently in the background, leaving virtually no visual clues that anything went wrong.

Cybercriminals also like to hide LNK files behind double extensions — betting that users won’t look close enough to see what kind of file they’re actually opening. Here’s a classic example:

Your best bet is to avoid clicking incoming LNK files altogether: no one in their right mind has a reason to email you a desktop shortcut.

By the way, if you haven’t updated Windows in a while, we’ve bad news for you: malicious code can automatically execute without you ever clicking the LNK — simply opening the folder where it lives is enough to trigger it. Microsoft finally released a patch for this long-abused vulnerability in December 2025. So don’t put off system updates — install them regularly to patch up the security holes attackers rely on.

Microsoft Office documents

.xls and .xlsx

The file extension .xls is used by older versions of Microsoft Excel. Millions of people use Excel spreadsheets every day, and many are still running outdated software, which makes XLS files a favorite bait for cybercriminals. Budgets, employee rosters, financial records, urgent reports, and other spreadsheets stop being harmless the moment a user clicks Enable Content, allowing the program to run macros — custom Microsoft Office scripts and commands built into the files. Once allowed, the malicious macro gets free rein to download files, launch programs, harvest system data, and alter settings.

Unlike XLS, XLSX is the modern Excel format, which doesn’t support embedded macros by default. Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee complete safety: the spreadsheet can still pull live data from external sources and automatically connect to web destinations in the background.

.docx

Although modern DOCX files don’t support macros by default, attackers have long figured out other ways to weaponize these documents. Typically, malicious DOCX files contain embedded links or instructions that force Word to contact external servers and pull down malicious payloads. Back in 2023, for instance, researchers uncovered a Microsoft Office vulnerability that allowed attackers to trigger built-in Windows system tools and download malware straight from the web.

To reduce your risk when working with Microsoft Office apps, we recommend turning on Protected View, blocking external connections, and disabling all macros without notification.

Macro support in modern Microsoft Office

Macros are sequences of commands that automate complex, repetitive tasks in Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint. In modern versions of Microsoft Office, documents containing embedded macros are saved in specialized file formats with extensions like .xlsm, .xltm, .xlsb, .docm, and .pptm. While Microsoft Office includes built-in security controls — such as blocking files downloaded from the web and warning you about potentially dangerous macros — if you don’t actually use macros and have no specific reason to run them, treat files with these extensions with caution.

How to check if a file is safe

• Use a comprehensive security suite that automatically scans files for malware, prevents infections, blocks visits to suspicious sites, and completely removes malicious files from your devices. You can take advantage of a 30-day trial of Kaspersky Premium if you urgently need to disinfect your computer or scan a file for viruses.
• Never open attachments from unknown senders. Curiosity can cost you dearly, since many malware strains specifically hunt for credit card and crypto wallet data. Let the Mail Anti-Virus feature included in our security solutions do the heavy lifting: it automatically filters out malicious or suspicious emails and protects you from phishing attacks.
• Examine incoming emails carefully: cybercriminals have become adept at disguising malicious messages. Always verify email addresses against official ones and make sure you know the signs of phishing and spam. Attackers might try to scare you with claims of a hacked account, lure you to shady sites with “unbeatable deals”, or urge you to review a work document attached to the email. Any attempt to manipulate your emotions is a major red flag that someone is trying to trick you.
• Never open files with double extensions. It’s almost always a trap.
• If you run into a file with an unfamiliar extension, take a moment to look it up online. Remember: a photo or plain text document will never have an .lnk or .vbs extension.

Check out our other posts on email and file security:

• Spam 101: what is spam, and how to defeat it
• Phishing 101: what to do if you get a phishing email
• Attackers disguising phishing as Google AppSheet notifications
• Checking QR codes in emails
• How to safely convert files

Mac users have historically trusted their operating system to keep them safe. That peace of mind mostly comes from Apple’s strict control over its ecosystem, and the fact that macOS has historically faced fewer mass attacks than Windows. However, that doesn’t mean Macs are invulnerable: threats do exist, and new ones emerge all the time. Over just the past few weeks, security researchers have published reports on at least two new campaigns that target Apple devices.

The malware used in one of the campaigns has been dubbed CrashStealer, while the other is known as ClickLock. Both rely on different tricks to force users into entering their Mac password, which attackers then use to steal account credentials, crypto assets, documents, and much more. In today’s post, we take a close look at how CrashStealer operates — and how to avoid falling victim to it.

A videoconferencing app with CrashStealer inside

It was back in May 2026 that researchers spotted the first signs this malware was being developed, and by early July, they caught it operating in the wild. The malware earned its name because of its core mechanism: it disguises itself as the macOS built-in crash reporting tool (CrashReporter) while functioning as an infostealer designed to hijack sensitive data.

Researchers managed to trace one of the websites users visited to download the malware. The site poses as a legitimate platform for distributing the video conferencing tool Werkbit.

However, you can’t just visit the site and download the software. Before downloading, visitors are asked to enter a special meeting PIN. This setup likely allows the attackers to limit the distribution scope by targeting only specific, pre-selected victims. Exactly how the cybercriminals choose their targets and deliver the PIN remains unknown.

The “lucky” users with a code end up installing the initial malicious payload — named Werkbit Setup. Interestingly, it carries a valid Apple developer certificate and has successfully passed Apple’s notarization process — meaning it cleared the automated prescan for malicious code. As a result, the attackers manage to bypass the operating system’s built-in Gatekeeper defense. This allows the payload to launch without triggering the usual untrusted software warnings.

Once launched, Werkbit Setup first reaches out to GitHub. Researchers believe using this popular platform helps attackers blend in by making these initial network requests look far less suspicious to security tools. After retrieving instructions from a GitHub repository, the program connects directly to the attackers’ server to fetch CrashStealer itself.

The loader then saves the malware to a temporary macOS folder, launches it, and wipes most of the intermediate setup files. As a result, a fully functional infostealer is up and running within seconds of Werkbit Setup starting. By the way, the user never gets any videoconferencing app.

How CrashStealer works

Unlike the Werkbit Setup loader, the CrashStealer malware itself isn’t signed with an Apple developer certificate. To keep users from suspecting anything, the malware disguises itself as the built-in macOS crash reporting tool, CrashReporter, by using the exact same name, app identifier, and a similar icon.

Once launched, CrashStealer completes a sequence of steps to gain access to sensitive data, establish persistence in the system, and cover its tracks:

1. Remove metadata — including the attribute that flags the app as an internet download.
2. Display a fake system prompt asking for the user’s macOS password.
3. Use the previously captured credentials to gain access to Keychain, the built-in macOS password manager.
4. Check the computer for installed security tools and malware analysis software.
5. Collect saved browser passwords, cookies, Keychain contents, and data from other password managers and crypto wallets.
6. Encrypt the data it stole and prepare it for forwarding to the attackers’ server.
7. Create a copy of itself and establish persistence to launch automatically every time macOS boots.
8. Delete temporary files and other installation traces to make detection much harder.

Step two deserves a closer look. The password prompt that the user sees looks extremely convincing. What’s more, the malware immediately verifies whether the credentials are correct: if you make a typo and enter an invalid password, CrashStealer will pop the window right back up to ask you again.

What data is CrashStealer after?

CrashStealer’s hit list is massive. First and foremost, its operators target Keychain: the built-in macOS password manager where the system stores account credentials, cryptographic keys, certificates, tokens, and more.

Users of third-party password managers aren’t safe either: the malware steals data from 14 of these services, including 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane, Keeper, KeePassXC, NordPass, Enpass, and RoboForm.

In addition, the malware collects all credentials and cookies stored in Chromium-based browsers — Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera, Opera GX, Vivaldi, Chromium, and NAVER Whale — as well as Firefox. The attackers clearly have a strong interest in crypto assets: CrashStealer specifically targets data from 80 different crypto wallet extensions, including MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet, Rabby, Exodus, Keplr, and Solflare.

Finally, the malware scans the Documents and Downloads folders to pick files that might be of interest to the cybercriminals. CrashStealer encrypts all the stolen data with the AES-256-GCM algorithm, ZIP’s it up, and sends it to the attackers’ server.

How to protect your device

The spike in attacks on macOS is a clear wake-up call: Apple users need to get proactive about their security. We recommend:

• Researching apps online before installing them
• Sticking to utilities from official app stores whenever possible
• Using a reliable security solution that blocks malicious websites and stops malware activity on your device
• Keeping all your credentials and banking details in a secure password manager. One option is Kaspersky Password Manager— which, notably, wasn’t listed among the apps targeted by CrashStealer

Kaspersky security solutions detect the malware described in this post and assigns to it the verdicts HEUR:Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Agent.gen and HEUR:Trojan-PSW.OSX.Agent.gen.

Leveraging legitimate software is one of cybercriminals’ tactics of choice, with remote management tools ranking among their top tools. A recent example involves the remote administration utility ScreenConnect. It’s designed for IT support teams to troubleshoot systems and configure software seamlessly in the background. However, when weaponized by threat actors, ScreenConnect becomes a versatile attack vehicle used to harvest data, deploy malware, and move laterally across corporate networks.

During a recent incident detected by Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response, our experts identified an attempt to use ScreenConnect in an attack. This allowed a detailed study of how attackers used this application in a large-scale malware distribution campaign. The following breakdown illustrates the mechanics of ScreenConnect-assisted attacks, and outlines key strategies to defend your organization against them.

How ScreenConnect reaches target computers

In the campaign analyzed by our experts, the attackers bundled ScreenConnect with legitimate free business software. They established a network of phishing websites to spoof popular tools, including OBS Studio, DS4Windows, DNS Jumper, Glary Utilities, Bandizip, Process Hacker, and others.

These rogue websites featured high-quality designs that could be taken for the official pages, making them highly convincing to unsuspecting users. Once the victim clicks the download button for the software, an archive is downloaded to their computer that contains additional files alongside the requested application:

• A legitimately signed Microsoft executable (exe), renamed to match the expected application installer (for example, OBS-Studio-Installer.exe)
• A malicious library named res.1033.dll
• An Assets directory containing installers for both ScreenConnect and the intended application

Launching the renamed file disguised as the app installer triggers DLL sideloading of a malicious library. This library silently runs the ScreenConnect installation without restarting the system, while using the standard Windows installer to set up the software the user originally tried to install.

The attackers used search engine optimization techniques to drive traffic to their fake websites. As a result, these malicious pages appeared at the top of search results for certain free software utilities on major search engines.

Our experts discovered over 90 domain names translated into more than 10 different languages. While most of these websites targeted English, Russian, and Chinese speakers, several domains catered to German, French, Spanish, Arabic, and other regional audiences.

A detailed analysis of the IP addresses and associated spoofed domains is available in our technical research article on Securelist, along with full indicators of compromise.

Why the attackers exploited ScreenConnect

In this campaign, attackers leveraged ScreenConnect to generate and execute malicious scripts on victim machines. These scripts served several key functions: they created exclusions for specific drives, directories, and processes within Windows Defender, disabled the User Account Control (UAC) security mechanism, and delivered and deployed AsyncRAT – a remote access Trojan.

To maintain persistence, the scripts configured a Windows scheduled task to run the malicious code at preset intervals. AsyncRAT then established a connection with the attackers’ command-and-control server to receive further instructions.

The primary objective of this campaign appears to be gaining unauthorized access to enterprise systems, likely to then resell it on cybercrime marketplaces.

How to secure corporate infrastructure

Although ScreenConnect in and of itself is a legitimate tool, its presence poses a security risk to corporate environments. Consequently, Kaspersky security solutions detect this application as not-a-virus:HEUR:RemoteAdmin.MSIL.ConnectWise.gen.

Security teams should implement the following controls:

• Enforce strict application control policies, including software allowlisting and restrictions on MSI package installations from unverified sources
• Monitor for newly installed remote management utilities and scheduled tasks
• Filter outbound network traffic from workstations to unknown IP addresses and domains

As noted previously, this campaign was originally detected through the Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response service, which can be employed to protect against such threats.

AI is getting better and better at solving CAPTCHAs. This makes website creators — who still need to verify that they’re dealing with humans rather than bots — come up with increasingly sophisticated proof-of-humanity checks. It seems an average user would no longer be surprised if asked to recite a poem — or, say, dance Gangnam Style — just to access certain websites. The latter could double as an age check, but I digress.

Attackers have learned to exploit this variety of sometimes bizarre checks to their advantage. In our blog, we’ve talked more than once about the ClickFix attack technique, which is all about slipping a malicious instruction to the victim under the guise of yet another CAPTCHA. Historically, this technique has been used to attack users of Windows-powered devices. However, researchers recently discovered a campaign that targets macOS users. In this post, we talk in more detail about the ClickFix attack technique, the new campaign aimed at Mac users, and the criminals’ goals.

What is the ClickFix attack technique?

Many common attacks and scams rely on social engineering, or more simply put — manipulation. Instead of looking for software vulnerabilities, attackers try to trick the user into doing the dirty work themselves: opening a malicious file, clicking a link to a fake website, sharing sensitive data, or running a harmful command.

The simplest example of social engineering is scam calls, where criminals pose as a boss, neighbor, bank security specialist, police officer… the list goes on almost indefinitely. And if you think that only, let’s say, not-so-smart users fall for these tricks, you’re wrong: social engineering has been used to hack the CIA chief’s email, hijack the X (Twitter) accounts of Elon Musk and Joe Biden, and steal half a billion dollars. In our post, They’re reading you like a book: scammers’ favorite tricks, we take a close look at their favorite techniques — give it a read so you don’t end up sharing company with those famous victims.

The ClickFix attack also relies on social engineering, except the scammers aren’t betting on the victim’s fear of an authority figure, but rather on their trust in technology and their habit of following instructions — even when they don’t quite make sense.

In a classic ClickFix scenario, a user visits a compromised or fake website and, instead of the expected page, sees a notification that there’s an issue. The site might claim that to continue, you need to complete an extra verification check, update your browser, or fix an error.

Next, the victim is prompted to follow a few simple steps that look harmless enough at first glance. Usually, this involves copying some text from the attackers’ website, opening the Run window, pasting the text there, and hitting Enter.

In reality, the text is a malicious command that downloads and runs malware on the device. Since the user carries out all the steps themselves, the operating system’s security mechanisms and built-in warnings are often dismissed as just another part of the instructions. In our blog, we’ve covered the typical pretexts used to trick victims into taking dangerous actions; you can read more about them here.

The ClickFix attack scheme quickly began spawning various spin-offs, such as FileFix and ConsentFix. Until recently, the victims of ClickFix and its variants were mostly Windows users, while Mac fans encountered it much more rarely. But lately, the number of ClickFix attacks targeting Apple device owners has been on the rise.

How does the ClickFix attack on macOS work?

The ClickFix attack on Macs, as documented by cybersecurity researchers, begins with the classic fake CAPTCHA scenario. To pass the proof-of-humanity check, attackers prompt the user to copy a command, open Terminal, and paste the text into it.

The more interesting part is what happens after the malicious command is run. First, it downloads a malicious DMG — the standard format for disk images containing installation files in macOS — from a remote server, and saves it to the /tmp temporary folder under a random name. Then the script mounts the disk image without showing it in Finder or creating a desktop icon — keeping it hidden from the user. After that, the script searches the disk image for an app or installation package, and automatically launches it once found.

One case documented in the researchers’ findings involved the widespread AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer) infostealer being distributed this way. To gain extra privileges on the system, the stealer Trojan displays a fake macOS system authentication window tricking the user into willingly typing in their password.

What are the attackers’ goals?

After the malware is installed, the attackers steal literally everything they can get their hands on from the victim’s device. Atomic macOS Stealer extracts sensitive information stored in Chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc, Vivaldi, CocCoc, and Yandex), as well as Firefox-based ones (LibreWolf, SeaMonkey, Tor Browser, Waterfox, and Zen Browser), such as the following:

• Cookies
• Saved logins and passwords
• Auto-fill data
• Saved credit and debit cards
• Browser profile data

On top of all that, the attackers also steal PDF, TXT, and RTF files from the victim’s device. The criminals are especially interested in crypto apps; specifically: desktop crypto wallets like Exodus, Electrum, Atomic Wallet, Wasabi Wallet, Bitcoin Core, Litecoin Core, DashCore, Guarda, Binance Wallet, Dogecoin Wallet, and Tonkeeper. The malware also gathers data from more than 200 cryptocurrency-related browser extensions.

But that’s still not everything…

It also targets the Telegram and Discord desktop apps. The malware doesn’t spare Apple’s ecosystem either — stealing Safari cookies, notes from Apple Notes, and passwords stored in the built-in Apple Keychain.

All of the collected information is added to a ZIP archive and uploaded to the attackers’ server. In addition, the malware replaces legitimate versions of hardware crypto wallet apps — specifically Ledger Wallet and Trezor Suite — with malicious fakes.

Together, this trove of data gives attackers broad opportunities to further compromise accounts, steal digital assets, and launch new attacks on behalf of the victim.

How do I avoid becoming a victim of ClickFix?

As social engineering attacks continue to grow, users need to be more vigilant than ever. That goes for everything from chatting with strangers on the phone or in messaging apps to everyday online activity.

• Never paste commands into your Terminal just because a website asks you to — whether it’s to pass a verification check, confirm your identity, or view hidden content. No legitimate website will ever ask you to enable its features by manually running commands Terminal.
• Never enter your macOS administrator password unless you completely understand what app is asking for it.
• Regularly install macOS security updates, or better yet, set them to install automatically by going to System Settings → General → Software Update and clicking the i icon next to Automatic Updates. While recent versions of macOS may warn you when you try to paste suspicious or malicious commands into Terminal, this isn’t a reliable feature. For example, the malicious code shown in the screenshot above didn’t trigger any warnings at all on macOS Tahoe 26.5.2.
• Trust the warnings from your operating system and security software rather than the instructions — or even the demands — of websites and apps.
• Install a reliable security suite for macOS. It’ll warn you and block malicious activity if you land on a suspicious website.
• Use secure password manager to keep your login credentials and crypto assets safe from cybercriminals.

Read our posts to learn about other threats facing Apple device owners:

• Crypto thieves ramping up attacks on Apple users
• The iPhone — invincible no more: a look at DarkSword and Coruna
• Predator vs. iPhone: the art of invisible surveillance
• AirBorne: Attacks on Apple devices through vulnerabilities in AirPlay
• SparkCat trojan stealer infiltrates App Store and Google Play, steals data from photos

Starting last year, Android users have been seeing the “number is now verified” system notification more frequently. And in some cases people even find mysterious outgoing text messages in their history that they never sent.

These messages often cause confusion and even anxiety: has a virus infected the phone? Are tech giants spying on our phone numbers? Let’s break down how this feature works, and what potential risks it poses to your privacy.

Why all these phone number verifications?

The notification pops up whenever Google’s phone number verification feature is triggered on your device.

Its main job is to make sure that the SIM card tied to a specific phone number is physically inside the phone. Once verified, that phone number automatically links to all active Google accounts on the device.

There are several key services that rely on the verification. Most importantly, it drives Rich Communication Services (RCS) — the modern standard for “rich” messaging right inside your standard text messaging app. It feels like a popular chat app, but without the need to install anything extra. Unlike iMessage, which is locked to Apple’s ecosystem, RCS works across compatible smartphones on various platforms since it’s an industry standard set by carriers rather than tech giants. Since recently, both Apple and Android users have been able to exchange RCS messages. For this feature to work in the Google Messages app, Google needs ongoing confirmation that your SIM card is active. If you pull out your SIM card, RCS chats will keep working for about eight days before turning off automatically.

According to Google, phone number verification serves several other purposes as well:

• Account security and recovery. A verified phone number enables quick sign-ins to your Google account, two-factor authentication, and easy password recovery.
• Emergency services and device location. This includes Find My Device, remote phone lock, and sharing your location with emergency responders — including via satellite messaging on the Pixel 9 and certain other modern smartphones.
• Better sharing on Google. This feature helps other people find you faster on Google Meet or Duo, use Quick Share to send you files, and see that the phone number is linked to your profile.

Google also recently confirmed that this data is used to counter scams. Verification helps block calls or text messages from spoofed numbers if both the real owner of the number and the recipient are using Android devices with verified phone numbers.

How does Google verify phone numbers?

Phone number verification technology has been around on Android for quite some time — Google was sending test SMS messages as far back as in 2019. However, it became widely visible to most users following a Google system update in September 2025. The process was baked deeper into the operating system, with number verification now running by default during initial phone setup, and re-running periodically in the background.

There are two main technical methods for the verification process. Which one your device uses depends on your mobile carrier and your version of Android.

The older method relies on hidden text messages. In the background, your smartphone sends a specialized technical text message to Google’s servers. The operating system intercepts this message before you ever see it, which is why it rarely appears in your standard text messaging app. However, due to software glitches or Android customization quirks, these texts occasionally surface in sent messages, startling users. They typically look like this: “(string of letters and numbers) Google is re-verifying the phone# of this device.” Google explicitly notes in its help documentation that standard messaging rates from your carrier may apply.

In recent years, direct carrier verification (via carrier APIs) has become the primary verification method. This approach is more modern and secure than previous ones. The smartphone sends an encrypted token containing device and SIM card identifiers to the mobile carrier, and the carrier responds with the confirmed phone number. The whole process takes just a couple of seconds and runs completely unnoticed by the user. Both global telecom giants and smaller providers have connected to this verification network. Notably, third-party apps can also tap into the results of this check through Firebase Phone Number Verification, getting confirmation from your mobile carrier about which phone number is active on the device.

“Other device data” and privacy concerns

In its official documentation, Google notes that device identifiers and SIM card data may be collected during verification. In practice, this refers to unique identifiers for the SIM card and its subscriber profile (ICCID and IMSI), as well as technical device identifiers needed to run mobile networks. Google also explicitly states that it does not sell your personal information, including your phone number, to anyone.

Naturally, sending additional unique identifiers to Google — especially given the scale of its advertising business — always raises concern among privacy-conscious users. Here’s what you should keep in mind:

Metadata collection. To run RCS, Google exchanges data with your mobile carrier. Even when the content of RCS messages is encrypted, metadata — such as who is messaging whom and when — can still be stored on your carrier’s servers, and in some cases, on Google’s servers. As cybersecurity experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation point out, if privacy is your top priority, you’re better off sticking to dedicated encrypted messaging apps.

Linked accounts. If you have both a personal and a work Google account (or a personal and a family account) set up on the same phone, the verified number will automatically link to both profiles. The operating system does not offer built-in tools to separate numbers for different accounts on a single device.

Phone number leaks. Apps on your device can already access various user identifiers, including your phone number. However, this verification system makes it easier to link multiple phone numbers to a user who has multiple Google accounts. And while Google states that it never sells phone numbers, you cannot say the same with confidence about obscure third-party Android developers.

On by default. The feature is enabled out of the box, and most users have no idea their device is silently querying their carrier in the background. While you can opt out in your Google settings once you notice it, there’s no guarantee that any data already collected will actually be deleted.

Turning off verification — why and how

For most users, verification is genuinely helpful. It simplifies account recovery, makes finding a lost phone easier, powers modern text messaging features, and assists emergency services when every second counts.

However, if you want to minimize the amount of metadata sent to Google, mobile carriers, and other data brokers, you can manually disable the feature. Here’s how:

1. Open your Android smartphone’s settings.
2. Tap Google, select the account at the top, and switch to the All services tab.
3. Under Privacy and security, tap Phone number verification.
4. Turn off automatic phone number verification.

If you also want to disable Better sharing on Google, go to Settings → Google → Manage your Google Account → Personal info → Contact info → Phone, select your number, and turn off the setting.

If you have multiple Google accounts on your phone, you’ll need to repeat these steps for each one. Unfortunately, verification sometimes turns itself back on automatically, and there’s no reliable way to prevent this on standard consumer phones with stock software.

Keep in mind that disabling verification means losing access to RCS chats in Google Messages — forcing you to fall back on basic SMS, or switch to alternative secure messaging apps. You also won’t be able to use that number for quick account recovery should you forget your password.

To thoughtfully customize your privacy settings across all your devices — regardless of the operating system, browser, or app — check out our free online tool, Privacy Checker.

Curious about other privacy risks you might not even know exist? Check out our other deep dives, here:

• Post-breakup digital hygiene: what to check and shut down
• What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom
• Is telehealth actually safe?
• Predator vs. iPhone: the art of invisible surveillance
• Brain drain: vulnerabilities in mental health apps

Cybercriminals are increasingly moving away from complex malware, relying instead on social engineering that exploits a common user habit: mindlessly clicking through endless digital rituals like CAPTCHAs, cookie consents, and authentication prompts. This habit is often targeted by various kinds of the ClickFix technique, which threat actors have been actively using lately. Researchers recently discovered a new variant of this technique, which they dubbed ConsentFix. It allows attackers to gain unauthorized access to Microsoft 365 accounts via OAuth — a highly popular vector right now — thereby completely bypassing the need to steal passwords. For organizations, these attacks present a severe risk of compromised corporate email, exposed documents, and breached cloud resources.

How ConsentFix works

Social engineering lies at the core of all ClickFix variations. Attackers prompt the user to follow a seemingly harmless set of instructions, which actually lead to the compromise of their device or account. In the case of ConsentFix, these instructions are designed to trick the user into granting the attacker access to their Microsoft 365 account.

The attack begins by making the user believe they must authenticate with their Microsoft account to access a specific page or document. To do this, cybercriminals usually send an email containing a link to a website typically imitating a popular file-sharing service. Attempting to access a specific document on this site prompts the user for verification, which can be obtained by following this sequence of actions:

1. Clicking Verify with Microsoft.
2. Signing in to the work account, at which point the attackers warn that multi-factor authentication (MFA) may be required.
3. After being redirected to a new page, waiting until “localauth” appears in the address bar.
4. Dragging the information icon ⓘ from the browser’s address bar into a drop zone on the page.

In practice, following these instructions causes the user to drag an URL containing a session OAuth token directly onto the attacker’s page. This token is exactly what grants the attackers access to the victim’s email and other Microsoft 365 services.

The potential fallout of a Microsoft 365 session compromise

At first glance, it might seem like attackers only gain access to a mailbox. In reality, the consequences can be significantly more severe. The attacker’s specific capabilities depend on the organization’s Microsoft 365 license, the services deployed, and the privilege level of the compromised account.

Even basic corporate Microsoft 365 subscriptions typically grant access to Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, while more advanced tiers may include additional services and administrative tools.

Even compromised corporate email alone is a major breach. The attacker not only gains access to email archives that may contain confidential business intelligence, but also can send phishing messages or launch internal BEC attacks on behalf of the user.

Beyond email, attackers are highly likely to gain access to the victim’s Microsoft Teams account, providing them with even deeper insights and broader leverage for various scams. Access to OneDrive and SharePoint is equally dangerous: it allows attackers to exfiltrate corporate documents, upload malware into cloud storage, tamper with existing files, and more. Ultimately, this creates a launchpad for moving laterally within the corporate infrastructure.

Publicly available attack blueprints

According to a Bleeping Computer article, the mechanics of ConsentFix are no secret. Attackers share detailed implementation guides on cybercrime forums, offering not only ready-to-use code but also video tutorials demonstrating how to deploy the attack. They also actively trade tips on how they harvest intelligence on organizations and their employees via LinkedIn and other OSINT channels to craft highly convincing phishing messages.

Collectively, this significantly lowers the barrier to entry for novice cybercriminals. As these guides and turnkey tools continue to proliferate, ConsentFix attacks will likely become increasingly common. Consequently, organizations should immediately factor this technique into both their defense strategies and employee awareness training programs.

How to secure your corporate infrastructure

The emergence of this new ClickFix variation demonstrates that simply blocking a specific keyboard shortcut or an isolated risky action on employee devices is not enough. Clearly, attackers quickly adapt to these measures. Therefore, to protect an organization from these types of attacks, we recommend the following:

• Be sure to deploy a robust security solution at the mail gateway level — this minimizes the likelihood of attackers successfully luring your employees to a page hosting the ConsentFix mechanism.
• Conduct regular cybersecurity awareness training for employees to keep them ahead of the latest social engineering tactics. Our training platform, Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform, can assist with this initiative.

When targeting an organization to steal information, maintaining a low profile is critical for attackers. They typically aim for long-term persistence, which requires avoiding security alerts while preserving access in case they’re detected and the organization initiates incident response or routine password resets. Malware such as infostealers or ostensibly legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools fail the first requirement: their use triggers EDR and generates suspicious events in SIEM consoles. Relying on stolen credentials conflicts with the second requirement: the moment the security team suspects a compromise, passwords can be changed immediately — terminating access. If attackers attempt to steal browser cookies instead of passwords, they face a different challenge: many online services now correlate device characteristics with the expected session cookie and block access if the cookie is used on an unrecognized device. Furthermore, cookie theft protection mechanisms implemented in Chromium-based browsers (such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera) this year have made this approach significantly more difficult.

To address this persistence challenge, the ToddyCat APT — whose main game is spying — developed a novel technique. Kaspersky experts discovered this method during an incident investigation and named it Shadow Token via Remote Debug (STRD). This technique allows the attackers to establish reliable, persistent access to a victim’s mailbox and other resources in Google Workspace. With minor adjustments, the same approach could potentially be adapted to target other services that grant third-party application access via OAuth 2.0 authentication.

How an STRD attack works

First, the attackers must compromise the victim’s system with malware. In past campaigns, ToddyCat gained initial access to organizations by exploiting known vulnerabilities in server software and distributing malicious loaders via messaging apps. The specific employee targeted by the attackers might not notice the intrusion at all. This can occur, for example, if the adversary first obtains privileged administrative credentials and uses them to deploy the malware onto targeted machines remotely. Crucially, the deployment and execution of this malware mustn’t trigger immediate security alerts.

Once active, the malware executes an STRD attack, connecting the attackers’ remote service to the victim’s mailbox using the OAuth 2.0 protocol. This process requires no user interaction and shows no visible activity on the screen. To the cloud environment (Google Workspace, in the case at hand), the activity appears as if the user has legitimately authorized a third-party app for email access or data backup.

After that, the malware can terminate its operations and even delete itself from the system. The adversary retains direct access to the mailbox using the acquired OAuth token — and they need no connection to the victim’s endpoint or to the corporate network for that. Depending on the organization’s Google Workspace configuration, this access can persist for an extended period and survive subsequent password resets.

The core concept of Shadow Token via Remote Debug

At the heart of this attack is a connection to Google Workspace services via OAuth 2.0. This is a legitimate workflow used whenever a third-party application requests access to calendar data, emails, or Google Drive files. For example, to display calendar meetings in Zoom and automatically generate conference links, a user must authorize Zoom to access Google services. Similarly, configuring a third-party email client or calendar app requires granting permission. During this authorization process, the service requesting access opens a new browser window. In this window, Google Workspace first prompts the user to select the appropriate account. Once the account is chosen, the subsequent screen displays the specific permissions requested by the third-party app, allowing the user to either approve or deny access. For this scenario to proceed seamlessly, the user must already be authenticated to Google services in their browser — which is typically the case in organizations using Google Workspace. If the user isn’t authenticated, additional steps for entering credentials and completing multi-factor authentication are introduced into the sequence.

The ToddyCat hackers developed a malicious tool called Umbrij to facilitate a two-step covert authorization process when the user is already authenticated in Google. First, the malware identifies the browsers installed on the system, and locates the specific folder storing the user’s active profile for each. The attackers target Chrome and Edge, as these are the browsers most likely serving as the primary ones within the organization.

Next, Umbrij copies the entire user profile folder to a different directory on the machine. It then launches an instance of the browser, specifying the path to the duplicated profile via the command line. Because this duplicate profile contains the user’s session cookies, websites with saved credentials won’t prompt for re-authentication. Furthermore, since this occurs on the exact same computer where the primary browser is running, online services detect no anomalies. The browsing history for this newly launched instance is isolated within the new folder, keeping it hidden from the user’s main account activity.

Crucially, the browser is launched in a dedicated debugging mode typically reserved for web development. The browser window and user interface don’t appear on the screen at all (headless mode). Instead, the browser can be controlled through a debugging port using the DevTools protocol, allowing the malware to issue commands and read the state of the screen. To orchestrate these actions, Umbrij leverages Puppeteer, a legitimate automation library.

After verifying that the debugging browser instance has launched successfully, Umbrij opens a legitimate Google Workspace OAuth screen within it. The request sent to Google is engineered to bypass additional security checks while requesting maximum access privileges. For the application ID — the identity supposedly requesting these extensive permissions — the malware impersonates one of two legitimate tools: Google Workspace Migration for Microsoft Outlook (GWMMO), or Google Workspace Sync for Microsoft Outlook (GWSMO).

When Google opens the window within the headless browser, Umbrij uses debugging tools to programmatically click on the corporate account name and the confirmation buttons. As a result, Google generates an authorization code for the app. Umbrij extracts and saves this code, subsequently forwarding it to the attackers’ command-and-control server. Finally, operating entirely within their own infrastructure rather than on the victim’s computer, the attackers exchange this authorization code for an OAuth access token. This single token is all they need to maintain long-term unrestricted access to the mailbox.

How to protect against OAuth token theft

If a Google Workspace account is compromised, incident response measures must include the following steps after collecting the necessary logs and other forensic data for investigation:

• Resetting the affected user’s password
• Terminating all active web sessions for the user
• Revoking OAuth tokens and third-party app permissions
• Reviewing and removing access granted through legacy App Passwords

In addition, security and IT teams must systematically audit issued OAuth permissions, revoke unjustifiable access rights, and restrict capabilities that allow excessive or unauthorized permission grants. We covered this topic in detail in our article on blocking unwanted AI assistants.

How to prevent exploitation of Shadow Token via Remote Debug

While Kaspersky users are protected against the Umbrij tool, security teams should proactively implement policies that prevent standard users from launching browsers in debugging mode. This functionality is intended exclusively for website and web app developers. This restriction can be enforced through the DeveloperToolsAvailability group policy (available for both Chrome and Edge).

Additionally, configure monitoring within your SIEM/XDR to track the launch of browser instances with an active debugging port. This event serves as a strong indicator of this specific attack technique.

In early June, cybersecurity researchers discovered that a compromised version of the Israel-based Hola Browser for Windows (version 1.251.91.0) was secretly downloading a Monero crypto miner to users’ devices. Shortly after the discovery, Hola confirmed that it had fallen victim to a supply chain attack. In this article, we break down how the attack went down, how the crypto miner works, and what it means for affected users.

What is Hola Browser, and how was the malware discovered?

The Israeli company Hola is best known for its VPN service, which users primarily rely on to bypass geo-restrictions and access region-locked content. In addition to the VPN, the company develops Hola Browser — a Chromium-based browser that comes with built-in VPN and proxy features.

Researchers first spotted signs of trouble during a standard compliance check for the AppEsteem Windows Certified Application program. As part of this certification process, independent cybersecurity firms audit software to ensure it only contains the components it claims to have and is free of unwanted or malicious features. Even after a certificate is granted, apps are regularly re-evaluated to ensure they continue to meet AppEsteem’s strict guidelines.

It was during one of these routine follow-up checks that experts noticed an unauthorized file bundling itself with version 1.251.91.0 of Hola Browser for Windows. Once installed, the file saved itself to the hard drive at C:\Program Files\Hola\me{.}exe. The file immediately raised red flags for researchers due to a laundry list of suspicious characteristics: it wasn’t on the list of approved application files, lacked a timestamp, and had no digital signature. On top of that, its code was heavily obfuscated, and it possessed the ability to inject itself directly into system memory.

Interestingly, researchers noted that the file didn’t show up in every single installation. Because the infection wasn’t widespread across all users, experts suspected early on that a specific stage in the Hola Browser distribution pipeline had been compromised. Hola later confirmed this theory, admitting it had fallen victim to a supply chain attack.

As for the suspicious me{.}exe file itself, closer analysis revealed that it was a stealthy crypto miner configured to mine Monero. We’ll now dive into the technical details of how it works.

How did attackers use Hola Browser to mine Monero?

Crypto miners are programs that harness a computer’s processing power to mine cryptocurrency. While some users install this software intentionally to generate a bit of income, miners that run on a machine without the owner’s knowledge are typically classified as unwanted.

Running a hidden miner can noticeably slow down the device, spike the user’s electricity bill, and shorten the hardware’s lifespan. That being said, it’s worth noting that a crypto miner infection will not actually steal the owner’s cryptocurrency; the damage is strictly limited to the hijackers leeching your computer’s hardware resources to line their own pockets.

As we mentioned above, the malicious download bundled with Hola Browser sneaked a Monero crypto miner onto victims’ devices. Launched in 2014 and built on the CryptoNote protocol, Monero currently trades at around US$330 per coin.

Compared to heavyweights like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Monero is a bit exotic and lesser-known to the general public. This niche status shows in its relatively modest price growth and smaller market capitalization — which is roughly 200 times lower than Bitcoin’s. However, Monero has one defining feature: privacy. While Bitcoin and Ethereum operate on fully transparent, public blockchains, where anyone can trace transactions, Monero is a “privacy coin”. It uses advanced cryptographic mechanisms to mask the sender, receiver, and transaction amounts. This extreme anonymity is exactly why hackers love hidden Monero miners — it makes it difficult for law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals to follow the money trail.

Additionally, Monero’s underlying algorithm is explicitly designed to mine efficiently using standard computer processors (CPUs). This stands in stark contrast to many other popular cryptocurrencies, which require specialized ASIC hardware or high-end graphics cards (GPUs) to be profitable.

But let’s look closer at how this played out with Hola Browser. When researchers dissected the malicious me{.}exe code, they found it was automatically adding its own files to the Microsoft Defender exclusion list. By allowlisting itself, the malware successfully blinded Windows’ built-in antivirus, allowing the crypto miner to run in the background completely unhindered.

Once inside, the program made a copy of itself under the name HolaMonitorService{.}exe, and set up a persistent Windows background service called hola_monitor_svc. This maneuver allowed the malware to entrench itself in the system, automatically launching every time the computer restarted. To avoid raising any red flags with sudden massive performance drops, the miner was programmed to stay dormant, kicking into gear only when the computer was idle.

How to protect your device from crypto miners and malware

To their credit, Hola’s development team responded swiftly to the initial reports of the suspicious file. They confirmed the supply chain breach, but stated that the incident only impacted 0.1% of their user base. The company has since tightened up security around its update distribution pipeline to guarantee that users only receive approved, certified, and digitally-signed software components moving forward.

In light of this incident, we highly recommend that all Hola Browser users update to the latest version immediately — especially those running the application on Windows.

More broadly, this situation is a textbook reminder of why it’s so critical to keep all your software up to date and run a robust cybersecurity solution on all your gadgets. For instance, Kaspersky Premium provides real-time alerts about suspicious software behavior and blocks threats instantly. As an added bonus, a Kaspersky Premium subscription includes a secure and reliable VPN.

Don’t forget that malicious crypto miners don’t just target PCs; they also go after smartphones, often disguising themselves as anything from popular mobile games to official government service apps. Check out our previous posts to learn more:

• Android Trojan posing as government services and Starlink apps
• What happens if you download a cracked program?
• Miner inconvenience: how cybercriminals blackmail YouTubers into promoting malware
• Mario Forever, malware too: a free game with a miner and Trojans inside

The World Cup attracts a great many fans — but also a great many scammers. While millions of fans tune in to watch the matches, cybercriminals are hard at work trying to get at their money and personal data. In fact, we’ve already flagged more than 336 fake websites designed to look exactly like the official World Cup page! As the biggest sporting event of the year heats up, here are the top red flags you need to watch out for.

Totally Legit Free Streams (No Scam)

Scoring a seat at WC26 has turned into quite the mission. Soccer fans are furious over ticket prices, which have officially been dubbed the highest in World Cup history. On top of lodging and travel costs, the situation is made even worse by America’s stringent immigration policies — where referees, team staff, and even players have faced major visa and entry headaches. But fans still want to watch the games, and that’s exactly where fake streaming platforms step in to “help”.

Here’s how the scam plays out: cybercriminals set up fake websites promising free access to World Cup match streams. But the moment you click Watch Now, you’re prompted to sign up and then pay for “lifetime access” to the entire tournament. In the example below, they’re asking for cryptocurrency — which is still a bit unusual, since scammers typically prefer good old-fashioned bank cards.

Fans who are desperate to catch their favorite teams live risk losing not just their money, but also their personal data, which hackers can later weaponize in targeted phishing attacks.

A losing bet

Match result predictions and sports betting always skyrocket in popularity during the World Cup, and scammers waste no time cashing in on the trend. And behind the flashy slogans lie classic scam tactics.

Take this beautifully designed Spanish-language website. To sign up, it demands a massive amount of personal information, including your full name, national ID number, email address, and phone number — and, of course, it asks you to create a password. If a victim uses the exact same password for multiple accounts, they’re essentially handing the keys to their digital life over to cybercriminals.

Another site, specifically targeting users in Colombia, turned the sign-up process into a paid ordeal — and it features every trick in the book.

• To “verify” your profile, you’re forced to use WhatsApp under the guise of avoiding legal complications.
• Before your account is activated, you must make a deposit. This means sending 100 000 Colombian pesos (about $29) to a specified account and texting the receipt to an “administrator” on WhatsApp.
• Next, you’re told to wait 12 hours for the “administrator” to manually activate your profile.
• Only after all of this do the scammers tell you can place unlimited bets (of course not true).

In many countries — including Colombia — sports betting is strictly regulated. Only a handful of licensed operators are legally allowed to run these sites, and users are required by law to verify their identity. Because of this, these shady workarounds can look tempting to people who love to gamble but don’t want to — or can’t — go through the official verification process.

Unfortunately, the scammers always win in this scenario. They walk away with your initial deposit and every single bet you place on their site. At the end of the day, their only real goal is to drain their victims’ wallets for as much as they possibly can.

Discounts for collectors!

The World Cup isn’t just about the matches; it also drives record-breaking sales of collectible merchandise — stickers, scarves, team jerseys, official match balls, and more. Naturally, plenty of scammers are eager to get a piece of that action.

Take a look at this website offering “exclusive, limited-edition” stickers and albums. Notice anything suspicious?

Check out those prices: everything is heavily discounted, even though the tournament is in full swing. All it takes is a quick price check against the real deal to spot the trap. In the screenshot above, the scammers are charging 67 euros for a sticker collection. On actual online marketplaces, that exact same set goes for at least twice as much, and on the official Panini website, it’s three times the price.

Fake websites mimicking popular sporting goods stores also offer to sell you shin guards, socks, jerseys, and any other gear. Of course, you’ll never see the merchandise, and you’ll lose both your money and your bank card details.

Deals that seem too good to be true are one of the biggest red flags. To make matters worse, with the help of AI, fake websites now look just as professional as the real ones, making them harder than ever to spot. That’s why we recommend installing our security suite before you start shopping online. It blocks phishing sites in real time and uses the Safe Money feature to keep your financial data secure.

Soccer by mail

Another attack strategy involves spam campaigns centered around the World Cup. In one email, our experts uncovered an ad for a soccer analytics and betting-tips service. It uses the classic high-pressure playbook: “ONLY 10 SPOTS AVAILABLE” — so hurry up before they run out! Naturally, access comes with a price tag: AU$200.

This scheme targets fans who are into sports betting, and paying for these types of services usually ends one of two ways for them: they either lose their money with zero guarantee of getting actual predictions, or get sucked into an even deeper, multi-step financial trap.

How to avoid falling for the scams

Across all these scenarios, the World Cup is just another convenient pretext for cybercriminals. Once the tournament wraps up, they’ll most certainly pivot back to their usual tricks — like fake job offers or Telegram phishing scams — until the next Olympics or soccer tournament rolls around and they switch right back to sport.

Our research consistently shows that online fraud has evolved into a massive illegal enterprise. You aren’t just up against lone scammers anymore; you’re dealing with large criminal networks. When it comes to defense, the best approach is a proactive one. By installing Kaspersky Premium, you can safeguard all your devices from malware, phishing, spam, and malicious or lookalike websites. Plus, the included Kaspersky Password Manager will generate unique complex passwords, securely store your sensitive data — like documents and bank cards — and stop you from auto-filling your credentials on fake sites.

• Watch the games only on legitimate streaming platforms. Don’t trust fake reviews and never enter your bank card information on unverified sites. Keep an eye out not just for sketchy streaming websites, but also for fake IPTV apps. As we’ve covered in detail before, scammers frequently use these to infect your devices with Trojans.
• Shop smart. The best way to avoid getting ripped off is to buy merchandise exclusively through official channels (where you won’t see suspiciously deep discounts), or simply buy your gear in person at official retail locations.
• Don’t click suspicious links. If a deal that’s too good to be true lands in your inbox — whether it’s exclusive betting tips or anything else — just ignore it and hit delete.
• Avoid logging in through Telegram bots. At the very least, this saves you from future headaches and annoying spam. At best, it keeps your account from being hijacked and your crypto from being stolen.
• Switch to passkeys wherever possible. Unlike traditional passwords, which are easily stolen and can be typed into any fake login page, a passkey is cryptographically tied to a specific website and won’t work on a phishing page. Kaspersky Password Manager can easily store and sync your passkeys across all your devices.

What other ruses do scammers use to make a quick buck? Check out our other posts:

• The Winter Games in Italy: how to avoid the scams
• Summer scams in Paris
• Meme coins and NFTs: how not to lose your shirt
• How to watch soccer safely
• Neither flowers nor gifts: how women get scammed

In April 2026, we discovered a new campaign targeting users of hentai games. Attackers are embedding a remote access Trojan named Argamal into game installers. While concealing its presence, it can remotely control the computer and steal files and personal data.

Here’s how to avoid falling victim to this new Trojan — and how to safely and anonymously enjoy spicy content with (or without) anime girls.

How computers get infected with Argamal

Most of the infected games are distributed through adult game and torrent sites. In some cases, they are posted for download on file-sharing services and linked on gaming websites.

Interestingly, instead of finding a dummy file inside the archive — as is often the case — the user gets the actual game built on popular engines like RenPy or RPG Maker. Infected pirated versions usually turn out to be scams: games fail to launch, folders are full of files with bizarre extensions, making it rather easy to put two and two together. Here, however, the user gets the actual gameplay they expected. Meanwhile, the Trojan lets itself in and keeps a completely low profile.

Tucked right alongside the legitimate files in the archive is a DLL that the game relies on to run, but it’s been rigged: as soon as the user launches the game, the infected DLL automatically loads into memory. There are no outward signs of infection: neither an installer popping up in the background, nor a scary window or prompt asking you to disable your antivirus.

Argamal takes things real slow: instead of immediately rushing to steal files and passwords or throwing a digital rager on your computer, the Trojan first checks whether it’s running in a virtual machine or sandbox, and then goes into standby mode.

During this time, the malware writes hidden parameters to the system, conceals the paths to its DLLs, and delays its own execution. Three days later, the computer connects to GitHub, downloads an encrypted file, decrypts it, and turns it into a working Trojan module.

To ensure persistence, the attackers register the malware under the WindowsColorSystem Calibration Loader system task, a built-in Windows feature that triggers at every user logon to load monitor color profiles. Before shutting down, the malware deletes temporary files and covers its tracks to make it even harder to detect.

What makes Argamal dangerous?

Argamal is a remote access Trojan (RAT), which means attackers can use it to remotely control the victim’s computer. Here’s just a short list of what it may entail:

• Executing arbitrary commands on the computer
• Downloading and running files
• Checking if an antivirus is installed on the PC (by the way, our security solution detects and neutralizes Argamal before it can harm you)
• Searching for and exfiltrating sensitive data from files and system settings
• Taking screenshots and streaming video from the device
• Sending data to the attackers’ server
• Monitoring user activity
• Shutting down or restarting the device

Essentially, the infected computer turns into a remotely controlled machine. The owner may keep calmly going about their day, completely unaware that their device has been compromised. Yet the consequences of such an infection can be devastating.

For example, a single password stolen from a text note can lead to multiple compromised accounts at once if the victim reuses the same credentials across different sites. That’s why we recommend storing strong and unique passwords in an encrypted vault of a password manager rather than in plain text files.

Beyond hijacking accounts, the Trojan lets attackers literally spy on the user — reading their chats, digging into secret files, studying their sexual preferences… The cybercriminals can then use this highly sensitive information for subsequent attacks, blackmail, and extortion. We’ve covered what to do if you find yourself being targeted by extortionists in a previous post.

Another common scenario involves quietly stealing or substituting financial data — for instance, intercepting credentials from banking apps or replacing crypto-wallet addresses in the clipboard, which sends all your money straight to the attackers’ accounts.

In short, there’s a whole laundry list of ways attackers can exploit a victim’s device and data.

Argamal, yamete kudasai! How to protect yourself from similar threats

If you’ve decided to become the proud owner of “Waifu Simulator Ultra Definitive Edition”, stay on your guard:

• Use security software that runs in real time and catches sophisticated malware. Despite the attackers’ best efforts to make the Trojan invisible, Kaspersky Premium instantly detects and removes Argamal from users’ devices.
• Avoid downloading adult apps, installation files, and spicy content from untrusted sources. Clicking a “free XXX game, no signup needed” is a surefire way to invite malware onto your device. That said, even official platforms like Google Play and the App Store unfortunately let infected apps slip through the cracks at times. To stop worrying about accidentally downloading a Trojan or an infostealer, use Kaspersky Premium on all your devices.
• Don’t share more data than you absolutely have to. If an adult game or website insists you sign up, enter personal data, or link third-party accounts instead of just checking your birth date, that’s a huge red flag. Sites rarely collect sensitive data for no reason. In the best-case scenario, it ends up with marketers and ad trackers. In the worst-case, it falls into the hands of bad actors who will use it for blackmail, phishing, or breaking into your other accounts.
• Don’t click ad banners on adult websites. Even the most popular platforms like Pornhub occasionally host ads laced with malware. If you find it hard to hold back, use a security solution that will block malware downloads and prevent redirects to suspicious sites.

• Watching porn safely: a guide for grown-ups
• How to watch porn safely and discreetly
• What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom
• AI and the new reality of sextortion

One of the biggest football (soccer) events of this summer is the World Cup 2026. The tournament is co-hosted by three countries: the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Unfortunately, events of this scale attract not just fans, but also scammers from all over the globe. We’ve already covered how cybercriminals are prepping for the World Cup online, and today we’re talking about digital security for fans on the ground in Mexico.

The country will host 13 matches and welcome millions of tourists. They’ll be staying in hotels, heading to games, checking out restaurants, navigating airports, and visiting popular tourist spots — and everywhere they go, the temptation to connect to public Wi-Fi will be high.

We’ve surveyed more than 84 500 (!) public Wi-Fi access points in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey — and we have a lot to share about their security. Spoiler alert: many networks are still using outdated security standards, so you really shouldn’t go on vacation without reliable protection and an eSIM.

What and how we tested

Walking across Mexico looking for public Wi-Fi access points would have been a bit tough, though that’s exactly what we did for a similar Wi-Fi security survey in Paris. You can check out the results of that in our post, How safe is Wi-Fi in Paris?

This time the mission was far more demanding: mapping the wireless landscape of three major metropolises. That’s why we went wardriving — scanning for and logging wireless networks from a moving vehicle while equipped with a smartphone or laptop. It’s similar to searching for Wi-Fi on your phone, where the device constantly listens for nearby networks. Except instead of connecting to them, we just collect data about them.

All information was used strictly for passive observation and infrastructure analysis. Beyond receiving publicly broadcast service information, the experts of Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) didn’t attempt to authenticate, intercept traffic, exploit systems, or otherwise interact with the wireless networks they discovered. Mobile access points deployed in cars and on mobile devices were excluded from the sample.

Our main target was Mexico City — the capital and one of the most densely populated cities in Latin America. We took a drive through popular tourist spots: Mexico City Stadium, Mexico City International Airport, Zócalo, Paseo de la Reforma, Colonia Roma, La Condesa, Polanco, Coyoacán.

In Guadalajara and Monterrey, we drove similar routes: stadiums, main avenues, airports, and popular neighborhoods. Below you can see a heatmap of the areas we covered, ranging from red for areas with the highest density of public access points, through yellow and green, to blue for the lowest concentration.

We used passive radio reconnaissance to log 84 500 signals and 69 500 unique network identifiers across these three cities. The majority of the signals were caught in Mexico City (61.4%), followed by Guadalajara (23.6%) and Monterrey (14.8%).

What we analyzed:

• Wireless network identifiers (SSIDs): the names that show up in your list of available Wi-Fi networks
• Information that can be gleaned from these identifiers
• Default router configurations and how ISPs deploy their networks
• Frequencies used and signal characteristics
• Channel load and radio frequency spectrum usage
• Wireless network security configurations:
  • Open and insecure networks
  • Networks with WPS enabled
  • Secure networks (WPA2/WPA3) with WPS activated

You can find the full version of the study on the Securelist blog.

Telltale public Wi-Fi access point names

Network names (SSIDs) can tell you a lot by unintentionally revealing information about hardware manufacturers, ISPs, deployment methods, and whether an access point belongs to a business or a private user.

About 34% of the public Wi-Fi networks we logged didn’t bother changing their names at all, either sticking with the factory SSIDs from the router manufacturers or using standard naming conventions from their ISPs. For attackers, this can be a pretty solid hint, since this kind of network name lets them know which provider owns a given access point, what hardware is being used, and how it’s likely configured by default.

Another troubling nuance is the large number of Wi-Fi networks (over 30%) that use the access point’s MAC address (BSSID) as the visible network name. The first few bytes of a BSSID contain an Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI), which gives away the router’s manufacturer. This is a useful lead for bad actors: they can find out who made the hardware and test for vulnerabilities specific to that brand’s models.

Is Mexican Wi-Fi well-protected?

An access point secured with WPA2/WPA3 can be considered more or less safe. All other authentication mechanisms yield much weaker results. We grouped the public Wi-Fi networks into four categories:

• Secure (WPA2/WPA3)
• Unsecured (open/WEP)
• Weak (WPA)
• Undetermined

The results are roughly the same across all three cities: about 82% of all analyzed access points are protected by secure standards. The outdated and insecure WPA protocol was practically nonexistent. However, more than 10% of the access points turned out to be completely unsecured. Connecting to these networks carries the risk of traffic interception and hidden surveillance.

But security isn’t evaluated by WPA protocols alone. We also checked for the presence of WPS, the infamous feature for quickly connecting to a network without entering a password, which is highly vulnerable to attacks. It turned out that WPS is enabled on nearly half (47%) of the access points in Mexico City, 43% in Guadalajara, and 41% in Monterrey. On average, 45% of the access points are potentially vulnerable to WPS-related attacks — sacrificing security for the sake of convenience.

What’s more, this feature frequently remained active even on seemingly secure WPA2/WPA3 networks — about half of them utilized WPS. This shows that having WPA2/WPA3 is still not enough to consider a Wi-Fi access point safe, as additional features like WPS can still leave the door open to attacks.

What else every tourist needs to know

Digital risks on a trip aren’t limited to public Wi-Fi alone, especially now that many are shifting away from public Wi-Fi to an eSIM. There are still plenty of threats in crowded places: public USB chargers, QR codes with swapped links, NFC and Bluetooth attacks, and, of course, social engineering tactics. Let’s break it all down.

Charging stations. Public USB chargers can also be dangerous: bad actors could potentially gain access to the data on your device or try to install malware. We covered these attacks in detail in our post, Data theft during smartphone charging.

Dangerous QR codes. Criminals can plant phishing QR codes in popular tourist spots. The pretexts can vary wildly; for instance, ads for team-specific fan “events”, or links supposedly offering discounts or restaurant menus. In reality, any QR code posted on the street can be considered insecure by default, and you shouldn’t scan them with your smartphone unless you have a QR code threat analyzer installed.

Fake broadcasts, tickets, and betting pools. Earlier, we described cases where bad actors were distributing malware via fake IPTV apps to capitalize on the WC26 hype. Remember, even if you plan to watch the tournament from home, you still need to stay alert and not trust the first sites that pop up advertising free broadcasts, offering betting pools, or promising unbelievably generous payouts.

NFC and Bluetooth attacks. Leaving Bluetooth enabled in crowded places can also cause problems: someone might try to discover your device, track you, or initiate an unwanted pairing request. NFC services with contactless payments create additional risks too — especially when paying in sketchy spots.

How to protect yourself and your devices

Despite the prevalence of secure WPA2/WPA3 public Wi-Fi access points in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, our study shows that public Wi-Fi networks remain vulnerable. It’s also important to remember that attackers can create fake networks — so-called evil twins — disguised as legitimate public Wi-Fi in airports, hotels, cafés, and tourist spots.

For the average user, it’s practically impossible to tell how safe a specific access point is when trying to connect. That’s why the safest option is to use cellular data to access the internet — completely eliminating the need for Wi-Fi. Besides, there’s no need to research the nuances of local laws, rates, and other cellular details for every country you plan to visit; you can just buy a global eSIM online in two clicks. We explained how to make the entire process hassle-free in our post, Internet on the go with Kaspersky eSIM Store.

If you still plan on connecting to public Wi-Fi, always use a VPN to secure your device and data when connecting to unfamiliar — especially unsecured — Wi-Fi networks. This creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server, making it impossible to intercept your data along the way. Haven’t picked a VPN yet? Try Kaspersky VPN Secure Connection, which is included with both Kaspersky Premium and Kaspersky Plus subscriptions.

Now, if you still plan to attend the World Cup without any cybersecurity solution, at least follow these basic rules of digital hygiene:

• Don’t use public USB chargers
• Don’t send sensitive information over connections that aren’t secure
• Don’t log in to banking, email, or social media accounts over unsecured Wi-Fi
• Turn off Bluetooth and NFC while walking around in crowded places
• Don’t trust QR codes posted on the street
• Connect to public Wi-Fi only when absolutely necessary

What else to read to make sure cheering for your favorite team isn’t only exciting, but also safe:

• Don’t let fake IPTV apps ruin your World Cup
• Soccer Cyberthreats
• How to watch soccer safely
• Travel safely and comfortably
• Airbnb security: tips for safe travel

It starts with the familiar: a short message, a trusted name, a routine tone. Delivery updates, work pings, brand alerts hum in the background, rarely attracting scrutiny. You check, you answer… — until minutes later you’ve slipped into a trap built to lower your guard and hijack your trust.

That’s why messaging scams cut deep: they exploit everyday habits where instinct, not caution, leads. Communication once moved slowly, leaving room for doubt. Now it’s instant — and that speed is a weapon in criminal hands.

On our blog, we’ve already examined numerous scam schemes in messaging apps — from pig butchering, where the victim is groomed for a very long time, or catfishing, where the scammer creates a fake identity, to phishing via chatbots or through gift-giving campaigns in messaging apps.

Now, for the first time, Kaspersky has set out to capture the full end-to-end reality of messaging-based scams to understand how quickly harm occurs, how they impact trust and what remains after the interaction ends. What emerges is a highly organized and industrialized scam ecosystem embedded within everyday messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, and email.

Kaspersky experts have prepared a report on targeted scams in messaging apps, detailing not only the financial but also the emotional damage caused by such attacks, as well as providing tips on how to protect yourself and avoid them. In this post, we explore the most interesting facts, but you can find more details in the full report.

The damage is underestimated

How much do you think a single successful attack via a messaging app costs the average victim? Ten dollars? Or maybe 50? You’re underestimating the scammers. Although more than a third (36%) of victims incur losses of less than $135, on average a victim loses… $733!

Country	Average loss per victim
Senegal	$392.94
Serbia	$493.32
Morocco	$504.28
Greece	$609.32
United Kingdom	$617.38
Côte d’Ivoire	$654.11
Spain	$672.67
United States	$724.73
Portugal	$868.20
Italy	$896.02
France	$1,193.58
Germany	$1,369.35

On the one hand, the financial hit doesn’t look catastrophic in isolation. These are micro-losses by design. Small enough that some never report them to the police. Small enough that banks don’t always investigate. Small enough to be dismissed as bad luck rather than organized crime.

But $733 is not nothing. It’s enough to cover a month’s worth of groceries, school or daycare fees, or utility bills. Against the backdrop of the global cost-of-living crisis, a single such loss can seriously dent a family’s budget.

In 11% of cases, losses exceed $1,350, and more than a quarter of victims (28%) report having been scammed three or more times in the past six months. Once scammers discover that a phone number responds, that contact becomes an asset, circulating from one database to another.

Now imagine the scale of the problem: if just 10% of the three billion messaging‑app users worldwide fell victim with the average loss, the total damage would amount to… nearly $220 billion! This is comparable to the GDP of Greece, and exceeds that of Morocco, Serbia, or Côte d’Ivoire.

It becomes clear that behind the daily flood of fraudulent schemes lie large scam cartels operating on an industrial scale, using AI to personalize messages that mimic those of family members, friends, and familiar brands. This, in essence, forms the basis of a full-fledged economy built on digital identity theft.

Speed beats scrutiny

More than half of successful messaging scams (52%) unfold in under 30 minutes — from first contact to the moment money or personal data changes hands — or even faster, before the victim begins to doubt the legitimacy of the sender. In fact, one in seven scams takes less than five minutes — quicker than boiling an egg!

The speed isn’t accidental. It’s the method. Scammers structure their schemes to deny the victim a chance to come to their senses. Every element is engineered to compress the decision-making window: the urgency of the scenario, the familiarity of the format, the plausibility of the request.

They rush you — faster, faster, don’t tell anyone, you only have a few minutes, solve the problem, don’t ask questions. Click the link, fill in the details, approve the transaction, or else… Or else what? The scammers’ imagination knows no bounds here, but if you don’t do something right now, you’ll definitely regret it.

Alas, the realization of what has happened usually comes when the damage is already irreversible. More than half of victims (51%) lose money; another 43% hand over their personal data — most commonly phone numbers, names, and email addresses — to scammers, and often the victim loses both.

Where and how attacks occur

A delivery notification, a bank alert, a message from a merchant you ordered from last week — messaging apps permeate every aspect of everyday life, making such interactions completely normal. An attack shouldn’t feel like an attack. It should feel like the same message you’ve received hundreds of times.

It’s no surprise that scammers focus their attention on this method of communication first and foremost. The most popular platforms for scams are predictable: WhatsApp (43%), SMS/iMessage (40%), Facebook (27%), Telegram (22%), and Instagram (19%) — these are the ones that people trust most.

A wide variety of schemes is used. Brand impersonation is now one of the three most common types of messaging scam worldwide — accounting for 31% of cases. Fake delivery notifications top the list at 38%, followed by investment scams at 37%.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds (63%) of fraudulent schemes span multiple platforms, moving from SMS to WhatsApp, from WhatsApp to Telegram, etc. In this way, scammers achieve two goals: they mimic organic messaging and evade moderation algorithms.

AI has taken scams to a new level

Just a couple of years ago, fraudulent messages gave themselves away with bad grammar, awkward phrasing, illogical requests, and an obsessive sense of urgency. Today, a phishing message looks, sounds, and reads just like the real thing.

Scam cartels want to catch people in motion — between meetings, on a commute, or during everyday tasks — when your attention is already fragmented. They mimic your mother’s turn of phrase. They match your bank’s tone of voice. They copy your courier’s format exactly. They mirror the rhythm, structure, and style of authentic brand communications across messaging platforms. And AI is accelerating all of it.

What this creates is overlap. Legitimate and fraudulent messages appear in the same environment, using the same formats, language, and triggers. The difference between them is no longer obvious.

The data shows that two-thirds of victims (66%) believe AI was used in the scam against them, 42% cite messages written by AI, 31% report generated or cloned voices, and 25% encountered deepfake images or videos.

That’s why mere awareness and “tech-savviness” may no longer be enough to protect oneself. From Gen Z to Gen X, messaging scams cut across every generation.

And what about the emotional toll?

But money is far from the only problem a victim is left with after an attack. After what they’ve been through, people develop distrust toward incoming messages, unfamiliar numbers, and any requests for action. As a result, 99% of fraud victims say they no longer trust incoming notifications in messaging apps.

This creates a crisis of trust in all digital channels in general. Every legitimate message can now be perceived as a scam. Brands, banks, and delivery services are forced to operate in an environment where the customer is, by default, in a state of distrust.

Dr. Elizabeth Carter, a forensic linguist and criminologist at Kingston University in London, notes that scammers use familiar contexts, common social settings and embedded linguistic norms to create the illusion for the victim that their decision-making is rational and reasonable in the moment. However, what is actually happening is that they construct false realities in which those decisions end up causing financial and psychological harm. She also notes that it is very hard to identify a false reality while you are in it.

After realizing they had been deceived, more than half of victims felt anger — the kind that comes from having trusted something and discovering it was used against you. 42% of victims report frustration, 38% — feeling upset. Moreover, several months later, these feelings haven’t gone away: nearly half of all victims (48%) are still angry, a third (33%) remain frustrated, and 30% are upset.

And nearly one in 10 victims don’t tell anyone what happened. They feel shame, a sense of having fallen for something so obvious. This leaves a significant portion of the actual damage unreported: only 24% of victims contact the police, and only 23% report it to their bank.

So what can be done?

The crisis of trust — and even a touch of paranoia — that has arisen due to widespread attacks on users can linger in victims’ minds for a long time, affecting their quality of life. To prevent this, follow these guidelines:

• Pause before you act. The sense of urgency you feel is almost always artificial. A legitimate bank, retailer, or delivery service won’t penalize you for taking 30 seconds to verify before clicking a link or confirming details. It’s precisely this instinct to resolve the situation quickly that scammers are counting on.
• Verify through another channel. If a message appears to be from a relative, colleague, or company you trust — contact them through another channel before taking any action. Use secure verification methods, and cross-check identities when something doesn’t feel right. For families, agreeing on a “safe word” in advance can defeat even the most convincing voice clones.
• Use a password manager. It will not only help you generate strong, unique passwords for all your accounts and store them securely, syncing them across all your devices, but also protect you from spoofed sites. Even if you click a phishing link and land on such a site, our password manager will notify you about the domain mismatch and refuse to autofill your username and password.
• Use protection that works in real time. Modern security solutions, such as Kaspersky Premium, provide real-time protection against malicious links and phishing attempts in the apps and websites you use every day. On Android devices, a dedicated layer of anti-phishing security scans and neutralizes suspicious links as they appear, even within notifications, before you even have a chance to click them.

We’ve covered other threats in messaging apps in similar articles:

• Pig butchering: large-scale cryptocurrency fraud
• How to safely meet people online
• How phishers and scammers use AI
• How to avoid falling for scammers in Telegram mini-apps

Threat actors are already gearing up for this year’s biggest football (soccer) event, the World Cup 2026. With millions of fans looking for ways to stream matches online, many will turn to IPTV apps to watch live TV broadcasts over the internet. It’s no surprise, then, that cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple campaigns over the past few months where malware was disguised as fake Android IPTV apps.

In this post, we discuss what IPTV apps are, how criminals use fake versions to spread malware, what this malware is capable of, and, most importantly, how to avoid becoming a victim.

What are IPTV apps?

IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. This technology delivers TV content over the internet instead of through cable, over-the-air antennas, or satellites. Naturally, the simplest and most common examples of IPTV are the official platforms of TV networks, which can include both websites and dedicated apps.

However, alongside official options, pirate IPTV services also exist. They usually lure users with free or dirt-cheap access to content that can otherwise be hard to find without expensive subscriptions — most notably broadcasts of various sporting events; football matches in particular.

As is typically the case with pirated content, these apps are blocked from official app stores, forcing users to download them from third-party sites. Consequently, the risk of using these services isn’t tied to IPTV technology itself, but rather to the fake apps and modified APK files distributed under the guise of well-known platforms — both official and pirated.

Massiv banking Trojan disguised as IPTV apps

For instance, in February researchers found the Massiv banking Trojan distributed under the guise of fake IPTV apps. Even then, experts noted that this wasn’t the only malware leveraging this tactic — several others were also spotted in the wild. The primary targets of these IPTV-mimicking malicious fakes have mostly been users in Portugal, Spain, France, and Türkiye.

In most cases, the discovered fake IPTV apps lacked the advertised functionality, so users didn’t get access to any content after installing the apps. Instead, the fake app would open the website of a legitimate IPTV service in a built-in browser to mimic normal functioning and avoid raising user suspicion.

Of course, the most interesting activity happened out of the user’s sight. These are some of the features the malware did have:

• Displaying fake windows on top of legitimate ones: fake forms for entering bank details or signing in to official services, as shown in the screenshot below.
• Activating a keylogger: recording and transmitting screen keyboard taps to the attackers.
• Hijacking control of the compromised device.

Perseus steals valuable information from users’ notes

In March, researchers reported on a new campaign where several fake IPTV apps were used to distribute an even more advanced and feature-rich malware strain: Perseus.

Research into Perseus shows that the malware is based on the source code of an Android banking Trojan called Cerberus, which leaked nearly six years ago. Perseus comes in two different versions: Turkish and English. The English-language version is more advanced and shows clear signs of AI-driven refinement.

Perseus abuses Accessibility Services, a set of Android features originally designed to make life easier for users with severe visual impairments. Fraudsters learned long ago how to leverage this tool to steal data from Android devices — a topic we’ve covered in detail across several of our posts.

By abusing Accessibility Services, Perseus gains remote control over the victim’s device. Here’s what it can do:

• Continuously capture and exfiltrate screenshots.
• Send a structured map of the device’s UI for remote manipulation.
• Mimic taps, swipes, text input, long presses, and other UI interactions.
• Turn on the screen, launch apps, and block them from running.
• Trigger a pitch-black screen overlay to hide its activities.
• Log keystrokes.

On top of that, the English-language version of Perseus boasts another notable feature. The malware can hunt for sensitive information like passwords, recovery phrases, and financial data across an entire range of note-taking apps: Google Keep, Xiaomi Notes, Samsung Notes, ColorNote, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Simple Notes.

All of these capabilities help criminals drain football fans’ money not just from various banking services, but from cryptocurrency apps as well.

How not to let cybercrooks ruin your World Cup

The World Cup is just around the corner, and millions of fans worldwide will definitely want to tune in to this year’s premier football event. Past experience shows that cybercriminals frequently cash in on major spectacles like this. So, how can you watch the  matches safely?

• Don’t download apps from unofficial stores.
• Even when downloading an app from an official store — since malware occasionally slips through the cracks there, too— read the reviews carefully. Users who have been burned by fakes and malware often leave comments to warn others.
• Install a robust security app to keep all your devices safe from malware.
• Avoid storing passwords or other sensitive information in note-taking apps. To ensure your data and finances stay secure, use a reliable password manager. By the way, Kaspersky Password Manager includes an encrypted note-taking feature, allowing you to store your valuable information safely.

You can’t even watch TV safely anymore these days! Check out other threats facing TV lovers:

• Is your TV box renting out your network?
• The perfect storm of Android threats
• Are your TV, smartphone, and smart speakers eavesdropping on you?
• The hidden risks of cheap Android devices

Phishing campaigns have become significantly more sophisticated and convincing in recent years. Sender addresses are now nearly identical to the real deal, emails are flawlessly written, and users are called by their names. But what do you do when a suspicious email comes from a clearly legitimate email address?

Lately, phishers have been exploiting the Google AppSheet platform to set up email blasts that originate from an official Google-linked address. Following a successful attack, they walk away with their victims’ accounts and sensitive data.

In this post, we break down how this new data theft scheme works, and how to protect yourself from these sneaky phishing attacks.

Google is offering you a job. Or Coca-Cola. Or maybe Volvo. Or are they?

AppSheet is a Google service for building apps without any coding skills. It’s frequently used by small businesses to automate routine workflows. Unfortunately, it’s precisely this simplicity that makes AppSheet so attractive to cybercriminals. All it takes to pull off a phishing scam these days are a few dollars and an app quickly thrown together using pre-made commands and blocks.

The playbook for AppSheet phishing attacks is pretty run-of-the-mill. The victim receives an email on behalf of a major company — and these messages often begin by addressing the recipient by name. It appears the attackers are parsing leaked data to match names with specific email addresses.

Next, the attackers play on the recipient’s emotions — employing either stick or carrot. They might panic the victim with urgent warnings that demand immediate action — think “Your account will be disabled soon” or “Suspicious activity detected”. Alternatively, they lure them in with irresistible bait, like the promise of a verified badge or an interview invitation from a tech giant. These fake HR emails are engineered to give victims an immediate rush. They make it look like the recipient’s application was already fast-tracked and highly rated, teasing a job offer that could drop as early as tomorrow.

For most people, these messages don’t raise a single red flag. The email bypasses the spam folder completely, and the From field displays the exact name of the company they expect to see. Unfortunately, none of it means the email is authentic: attackers can put whatever they want in the display name. And let’s be honest: very few people actually stop to scrutinize the sender’s email address.

In AppSheet-based phishing campaigns, the sender is always the same: noreply{@}appsheet.com. But here’s the real kicker: that address is 100% legitimate. Because it’s tied directly to Google’s own infrastructure, there’s a good chance that standard anti-spam filters greenlight these emails without blinking.

Naturally, to secure that coveted interview or fix their account, the victim clicks the link — and then voluntarily hands over their entire digital identity on a copycat website: full name, address, phone number, etc. From there, the attackers can sell the harvested data on the dark web, or weaponize it for secondary, targeted attacks. To top it all off, the victim is redirected to a phishing login page, which allows the attackers to steal their accounts.

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how a victim goes from receiving a fake Google Careers portal email to having their account completely compromised:

Similar phishing campaigns are launched on behalf of other major tech brands — and the users who hand over their Apple account data risk losing not just their account but also control of all their Apple devices. The attackers might pressure the victim into signing out of their personal Apple ID, and in to a “corporate account” for verification — which is in reality an Apple account they own. The moment the victim does so, the criminals take complete remote control of the used device, often using Lost Mode to lock the victim out and hold their phone to ransom.

To make matters worse, attackers don’t always drop a malicious link in the initial email. Instead, they play the long game — hooking the target into a conversation by asking them to reply and confirm their interest. This pretexting creates an illusion of chatting with a real recruiter. And this playbook isn’t reserved exclusively for Silicon Valley, either. Attackers frequently impersonate globally recognized household names, like Volvo or Coca-Cola. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that attackers want someone’s Coca-Cola account — if the user even has one to begin with. Most likely, the goal is to steal sensitive data or convince the user to log in to a phishing form using their Google/Apple/Facebook, etc. credentials.

Do you want to become Meta-verified?

Of course, “dream jobs” aren’t the only bait used. We’ve seen campaigns where “Facebook Support” reaches out to tell a user they’ve been deemed eligible for the prestigious Meta Verified badge — a blue checkmark normally reserved for top-tier celebrities and global brands. To secure the coveted blue checkmark, the victim is directed to a phishing page where they’re asked to complete an identity form — before handing over the ultimate prize: their Facebook username and password. And it’s all in the name of security, naturally!

These spoofed sites are created in a wide variety of languages, and tailored to users in different countries. Below is the Dutch version.

In other campaigns, attackers abuse Google’s AppSheet to weaponize sheer panic, trying to unsettle the user with claims that they’ve violated Meta’s intellectual property policy — and threatening to permanently close their Facebook account. To appeal, the victim must click a link to… a phishing site, provide their personal information, and, of course, enter their Facebook username and password.

How to spot phishing and protect your accounts

Sadly, phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with attackers routinely hijacking the reputation of legitimate services and domains. Here’s how to keep from falling into their traps, and safeguard your data:

• Remember: not all phishing emails end up in the spam folder. Standard spam filters in email clients often fail to detect advanced attacks — and the AppSheet case is a prime example. To avoid accidentally taking the bait, use Kaspersky Premium on all your devices. It intercepts phishing emails and instantly blocks links to spoof websites — even if the attacker is hiding behind a completely legitimate domain. Additionally, the Android version can detect malicious and phishing links in messages from any app.
• Check the email for odd typos. To keep their messages from setting off alarms, attackers frequently resort to sneakily inserting extra spaces or swapping out characters. Take this example from one of the emails we found: Fac eb o ok  S u ppo r t instead of Facebook Support.
• Before taking any action on a website, carefully check its domain name against the official address. Bad actors frequently create addresses that only appear to be the real thing until you look close enough. Install Kaspersky Premium to always be sure you don’t land on a spoofed site.
• Look at the sender’s address first, not just the display name. If an email claims to be from Google Careers, Apple HR, or Facebook Support, but the sender address points to AppSheet or another unrelated service, don’t even bother reading this message. That domain mismatch is a dead giveaway that you’re looking at a trap. Cross-reference email addresses with the ones listed on the companies’ official websites.
• Check for email signatures. For instance, all emails sent via AppSheet include a disclosure note at the very bottom. You are much more likely to receive a legitimate AppSheet notification from a small company or business, but definitely not from a tech giant. Major corporations typically use their own domains for their emails.
• Use a password manager. Even if you land on a spoofed site and try to enter your password, a reliable password manager will notify you about the domain mismatch and refuse to autofill your username and password.
• Don’t forget about two-factor authentication. If it’s enabled, just having your username and password won’t help the attackers access your account — they’ll also need a one-time code. However, they might still try to trick you into giving that up too, so be doubly careful whenever you enter two-factor authentication codes anywhere.
• Use passkeys instead of passwords whenever possible. This technology provides excellent protection against phishing: even if you visit a malicious site and try to sign in, the passkey won’t work on the spoofed domain. You can store and sync passkeys across different devices in Kaspersky Password Manager. Read our post on the subject to learn more about how passkeys work.

Phishing attacks are growing increasingly sophisticated. Here’s what else you should know about phishing:

• What happens to data stolen using phishing?
• Browser-in-the-browser attacks: from theory to reality
• Phishing and spam: the wildest campaigns of 2025
• Phishing in Telegram Mini Apps: what’s Habib’s papakha got to do with it?
• How phishers and scammers use AI

Imagine handing your smartphone over for repair. A couple of days later, you pick it up — and great, it’s working again! But you won’t even realize that your device has been injected with malicious code, allowing attackers to access your smartphone even when it’s locked.

This is the beginning of the story shared by Kaspersky ICS CERT researchers, Alexander Kozlov and Sergey Anufrienko, at the Black Hat Asia 2026 conference. They managed to uncover a vulnerability that flips conventional assumptions about smartphone and IoT security on their head. Its core lies at the very heart of Qualcomm chips.

What is BootROM?

To grasp the severity of this discovery, we first need to look at how a modern device powered by a Qualcomm chip boots up. Think of it as a fortress with multiple layers of security. Each subsequent layer verifies the pass issued by the previous one. The bedrock foundation — the most trusted layer of them all — is the BootROM, a read-only memory baked directly into the silicon that can’t be modified once it comes off the fab.

The BootROM is the very first thing to run when a device powers on. It verifies the signature of the next bootloader, which in turn verifies the next, building a chain of trust all the way up to the operating system. If an attacker can compromise this chain at the BootROM level, it’s game over: the malicious code will execute before the main operating system even has a chance to load.

This is exactly what attackers can do by exploiting the CVE-2026-25262 vulnerability discovered by Kaspersky ICS CERT researchers.

Emergency Download Mode as an entry point

The research began with a protocol called Sahara. This is a component of Emergency Download Mode (EDL). Manufacturers and service centers use it to revive bricked devices: the phone is connected to a computer via USB, and a special utility program signed by the manufacturer (in this case, Qualcomm) is uploaded to it.

Sahara is implemented directly within the ARM PBL (Primary Boot Loader) — the BootROM itself. This means the protocol runs before any operating system boots, before any user access privileges are checked, and before any security controls are activated. The device simply waits for a USB connection, ready to accept data.

The communication scheme looks simple: the device sends a handshake (HELLO) to the computer, the computer selects the mode, a cycle begins to upload the utility program in chunks, and finally, the device executes the uploaded code. And it was within the verification logic of these very file chunks that the vulnerability was identified.

Write-what-where: the core of the vulnerability

In technical terms, the bug introduced by the developers is classified as CWE-123: Write-What-Where Condition. This is about as bad as it gets when it comes to flaws in low-level programming. An attacker can write arbitrary data to an arbitrary address in the device memory.

Without diving too deep into the technical weeds, suffice it to say that by exploiting the discovered vulnerability, attackers can gain access to any data on the device, including user-entered passwords, files, contacts, geolocation data, as well as the hardware sensors like the camera and microphone. In certain scenarios, complete control over the device is possible. Just a few minutes of physical access to the device via a cable connection, and the gadget has been compromised. This creates a risk if you hand your smartphone over to a repair shop, pass it to someone else to set up and install apps on, or just leave it unattended.

Which devices are affected

The CVE-2026-25262 vulnerability affects the following Qualcomm chip series: MDM9x07, MDM9x45, MDM9x65, MSM8909, MSM8916, MSM8952, and SDX50 — every single version released to date, until the vulnerability is patched by the manufacturer.

These are no obsolete museum pieces. The MDM9207, which we used for the bulk of our research, is integrated into modem modules for the internet of things (IoT), industrial equipment, smart home devices, healthcare monitoring systems, logistics trackers, and banking terminals. The MSM8916 powers many budget smartphones, while the SDX50 is used in automotive control units.

How vulnerable devices get attacked

The catch is that the attacker needs physical access to the device to pull this off. In the real world, this translates to:

• Smartphone repairs at third-party repair shops, where the phone is left for several hours
• Customs checkpoints in certain countries, where devices are withheld, inspected, and then returned
• Lost and found scams, where your phone is stolen, tampered with, and then mysteriously found
• Corporate espionage via an insider or a rogue employee

With just a few minutes of physical access to the device an attacker can plant a backdoor so deep inside that standard research tools won’t even detect it in most cases.

Why there’s no patch — and what to do

Qualcomm was notified of the discovery in March 2025 and confirmed the vulnerability in its chips. To identify it, the vendor reserved CVE-2026-25262, and on April 20, 2026, Kaspersky ICS CERT published technical information on the vulnerability and recommendations for users.

Qualcomm included this vulnerability in its May security bulletin. While fixing already-made devices is fundamentally impossible, the company promised to make all future chips without this vulnerability.

If you currently own a device with an affected chip, use our recommendations below to help mitigate the risk of infection.

• Enforce strict physical control: don’t leave your devices unattended, especially when traveling or on business trips.
• Choose only authorized service centers for repairs and maintenance.
• Regularly update your firmware — this won’t patch the BootROM vulnerability, but it can eliminate many related vulnerabilities at higher levels.
• Use a Kaspersky for Android on your device. This will safeguard your gadget from other threats that, combined with this vulnerability, could lead to unpredictable consequences.

If you notice that your gadget with a vulnerable Qualcomm chip starts acting up — overheating when idle, reporting unexpected spikes in network traffic, or exhibiting strange app behavior — you may have fallen victim to this vulnerability. You can wipe the malicious code and reset your device to its baseline state simply by completely cutting its power. This means either pulling the battery or letting it drain all the way to zero until the gadget shuts down entirely. In this case, the malicious code will most likely not persist on the device — during our research, we were unable to confirm that it could achieve persistence in non-volatile memory.

Want to learn more about severe vulnerabilities in Android phones? Check out these posts:

• Attacks on 5G networks: the arms race continues
• Are geolocation services spying on you?
• Pixnapping vulnerability: unblockable screenshots of your Android phone
• Data theft during smartphone charging
• Trojan embedded in fake Android smartphones

Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium… The average law-abiding family today pays for five to 10 subscriptions just to watch their shows of choice, with the monthly bill easily crossing the hundred-dollar mark. It’s no surprise, then, that social media and online marketplaces are seeing a surge in demand for the “magic boxes” that popped up at the end of 2025: Android-powered TV boxes that promise to unlock thousands of channels and every streaming service subscription-free for a one-time purchase.

Ads for these devices are flooding TikTok and Instagram: smiling influencers unbox the SuperBoxes, plug them into a TV, and browse endlessly through channels. It looks like the ultimate life hack against subscription fatigue, right? In reality, it’s one of the easiest ways to invite a botnet into your home network.

What’s wrong with these cheap TV boxes?

Stories about malicious TV boxes have surfaced before, but right now, their marketing has reached a truly alarming scale.

At the end of 2025, analysts examined several models of the popular SuperBox device available from major retail stores and online marketplaces. The findings were deeply concerning: immediately upon powering up, the devices began pinging the servers of the Chinese messaging app Tencent QQ, as well as the Grass proxy service — effectively renting out the owner’s internet bandwidth to third parties.

Inside the firmware, researchers discovered applications completely uncharacteristic of a media player: a network scanner, a traffic analyzer, and tools for DNS hijacking. Consequently, the device not only streams pirated content but also scans the local network for other targets (including industrial SCADA interfaces), and stands ready to participate in DDoS attacks. The SuperBoxes were also found to contain folders with the telltale name “secondstage”, a textbook indication of multi-stage malware.

More recently, in April 2026, the Darknet Diaries podcast featured an interview with a security researcher known by the alias D3ada55, who shared plenty of intriguing details about these boxes — including the fact that they were still openly sold on major platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.

The infection chronicles: BADBOX to Keenadu

The SuperBox case is far from the only instance where Android devices have been turned into botnet nodes — or sold infected right out of the box. Here’s a look at the most recent cases:

• BADBOX 2.0. In July 2025, Google filed a lawsuit against the operators of a botnet that compromised over 10 million Android devices — mostly cheap TV boxes, tablets, and projectors lacking Google Play Protect certification. As we reported earlier, BADBOX 2.0 specifically targets TV boxes, operating simultaneously as a proxy network and an ad fraud engine.
• Kimwolf. In December 2025, the QiAnXin XLab team uncovered a DDoS botnet that had hijacked around 1.8 million Android devices. The infected hardware included generic models from off-brand manufacturers sporting high-profile names like TV BOX, SuperBox, XBOX, SmartTV, and others. The infection footprint was massive, with compromised devices shipped worldwide. Among the hardest-hit countries were Brazil, India, the U.S., Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico.
• Keenadu. Our experts discovered this malware lurking in the firmware of brand-new devices back November 2025, though it didn’t gain widespread attention until after we published a study about it in February 2026. Keenadu masquerades as legitimate system components, embedding itself even into facial-recognition unlock apps, potentially granting attackers access to biometrics, banking data, and personal messages.

All of these stories share the same origin: the Triada Trojan, first documented by our researchers back in 2016 and dubbed at the time “one of the most advanced mobile Trojans”. Over the past decade it has evolved from a standard piece of malware into a modular backdoor baked directly into firmware during manufacturing.

How the infection scheme works

Manufacturers of cheap TV boxes cut corners on absolutely everything: Google Play Protect certification, firmware audits, and security updates. Many of these devices run on the Android Open Source Project without any security guarantees whatsoever. Somewhere along the supply chain — whether at the factory, through a middleman, or at a distributor — a backdoor gets injected into the firmware image. Our experts suspect that the manufacturer itself might not even be aware of the compromise.

The sheer scale of the infection turns millions of identical boxes into the perfect foundation for a botnet: every compromised device represents a unique IP address that can be rented out to anyone. Botnet operators like Kimwolf monetize this not only through distributed DDoS attacks but also by reselling the bandwidth of infected smart TVs and streaming boxes.

What this means for you

An infected TV box sits right in your living room, connected to your home Wi-Fi. That means it can see smartphones running banking apps, network-attached storage (NAS) units holding family archives, IP cameras, smart locks, work laptops, and any other the devices connected to your Wi-Fi network.

With this kind of beachhead inside your home network, an attacker can intercept unencrypted traffic, spoof DNS requests, scan ports, and hunt for vulnerabilities on neighboring devices. On top of that, they can use your IP address for fraudulent activity. As a result, in the best-case scenario, your IP will end up blacklisted, and legitimate services will start blocking you for suspicious activity; in the worst-case scenario, law enforcement could come knocking on your door.

How to spot a potentially dangerous gadget

You should be on alert if a device:

• Is sold under a no-name brand like T95, X96Q, MX10, TV BOX, SuperBox, or some such
• Promises free lifetime access to paid premium services for a one-time fee
• Requires you to disable Google Play Protect, or install third-party APK files during the initial setup
• Lacks Play Protect certification entirely
• Is promoted through aggressive spam campaigns on social media

How to avoid hosting a botnet node

• Buy certified TV boxes that feature Google Play Protect, or purchase devices directly from reputable telecom operators and internet service providers.
• Isolate all smart home devices. Set up a separate Wi-Fi network on your home router for TV boxes, cameras, smart speakers, robot vacuums, and similar gear, while keeping smartphones, NAS units, and computers on the main network. This prevents malware from spreading to your critical gadgets.
• Regularly update the firmware on all your devices, and don’t forget about your router — it’s another vulnerable link in the chain.
• Remove any applications from your Android TV box that you didn’t install yourself, especially alternative app stores, Wi-Fi “boosters”, and “system cleaners”.
• Monitor your traffic. Modern routers and Kaspersky Premium can display which devices are connecting to where. Frequent connections from a media player to servers in China are a major security red flag.
• Install Kaspersky Premiumon all your devices — it protects against Trojans, and blocks the phishing pages often used to distribute infected APK files.
• Don’t disable Google Play Protect, and avoid installing APKs from shady sources — this is the primary infection vector that bypasses the official app store.
• If in doubt, return the TV box. A cheap streaming device isn’t worth risking your biometrics, banking data, or the reputation of your IP address.

Want to know how else to protect your smart home devices? Read more in our related posts:

• Are your TV, smartphone, and smart speakers eavesdropping on you?
• Is your router secretly working for foreign intelligence?
• Vulnerability in the Rubetek Home smart-home app
• Best smart home standards and how to implement them
• How to secure your smart home

Have you ever tried to tally up how much you spend on subscriptions each month? Music, movies, gaming, language courses, delivery services, heated seats, and even the ability to chat with the Grok bot directly from your car — there’s a subscription for just about everything now. There’s even a subscription service specifically designed to… track your other subscriptions.

The number of subscriptions varies significantly depending on where you live, but statistically, 78% of adults worldwide have at least one paid subscription, with the average user juggling 5.6 active services. Furthermore, a large portion of these are family plans used by groups of close relatives… and sometimes other people: 37% of users share their subscriptions outside their immediate family.

Because subscription accounts, especially family plans, often contain sensitive personal data, they’ve become a prime target for cybercriminals. Today we look at how to manage your subscriptions securely, avoid having your accounts compromised, and keep from falling for scammers’ latest tricks.

Security of shared accounts and subscriptions

Why would anyone want to hack your subscription? Even if the service only offers entertainment, your account almost certainly contains sensitive information: your name, address, email, phone number, the names of other members, and other personally identifiable information. This data is then sold on the dark web and used for further attacks.

Attackers compromise subscription accounts either through social engineering and phishing, or by taking advantage of many users’ reliance on weak or leaked passwords. As we recently highlighted in our research, nearly half of all passwords worldwide can be cracked in less than a minute. Scammers then either resell existing subscriptions or slots in a family group at a discount, or they sign the victim up for new services, hoping the extra charges go unnoticed.

Finally, some middlemen don’t bother with hacking at all; they simply buy bulk subscriptions for a large number of devices, where the per-unit cost is typically much lower. They then resell individual slots in these plans on online marketplaces. As a result, a single “family” account can end up filled with people who are complete strangers to one another.

Sharing subscriptions with family and others

Many subscription owners think nothing of sharing access with family and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

The worst-case scenario from a security standpoint is when a single account is purchased and the owner shares the login and password with other users. This usually happens when people try to save money on a family plan by buying an individual subscription and sharing it. Some services even allow for different profiles, but they are all tied to a single account, meaning the credentials are shared. This is how streaming platforms like Hulu and Disney+ operate.

Sharing one account among multiple people significantly increases the risk of your credentials falling into the wrong hands. There’s no way to guarantee that everyone else is storing those details securely or that their devices aren’t infected with malware. Even without malware, it’s incredibly easy to accidentally hand over a password to attackers simply by signing in to the subscription service over unprotected public Wi-Fi.

It’s entirely possible that the password you kindly shared with some friends has already surfaced in some corner of the dark web, and you may soon lose access to your account. Furthermore, if you reuse the same password across different sites and apps, your other accounts are now in the crosshairs as well.

The second scenario is when each group member has an individual account. Many services now allow you to add extra users to a subscription at no additional cost, and most owners are happy to give away these free slots. Even then, you shouldn’t let your guard down: a breach of just one of these accounts can still leak sensitive information, such as family members’ names, addresses, billing info, and other subscription-related data.

How to protect your subscriptions (and your wallet)

To keep your and your loved ones’ personal data private and your accounts under your control, follow these simple rules.

Use strong account security

To do this, learn — and teach your friends and family — how to use password managers, two-factor authentication, or passkeys.

If you and your loved ones rely on memory to store passwords, there’s a high probability that you’re reusing the same one across multiple services. This is a major blunder: data breaches happen all the time, and a single compromised password gives attackers access to your other accounts.

The simplest solution is to use a password manager that generates and remembers complex, unique passwords for every site and service on your behalf. All you have to do is remember the single main password for its encrypted vault. Additionally, Kaspersky Password Manager doesn’t just store and create passwords; it can also check if they’ve appeared in leaked databases, and sync your credentials across all your devices.

Additionally, a password manager provides a robust defense against phishing: unlike a human, who can easily be misled by a sign-in form that looks almost identical to the real thing and is hosted on a look-alike domain, a password manager won’t fall for the trick. It’ll only offer to autofill your saved login and password on the specific site or service for which they were originally stored.

Avoid using browsers to store your passwords: unfortunately, attackers have long figured out how to extract browser-saved passwords in a matter of seconds.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is an extra layer of verification the system requests after you enter your password — such as an SMS code or a one-time code from an authenticator app. Whenever technically possible, be sure to enable 2FA on every account linked to a subscription. This applies to the subscription services themselves, as well as any third-party accounts you use to sign in, such as Google, Apple, or Facebook.

We recommend storing your two-factor authentication tokens and generating the one-time codes — which refresh every 30 seconds — inside Kaspersky Password Manager. This significantly lowers the chances of someone hijacking your account. Even if an attacker somehow discovers or guesses your password, they won’t be able to get the code without physical access to your device.

Finally, you can ditch passwords (almost) entirely by switching to passkeys. We’ve previously covered what this password alternative looks like and the specifics of using it. Currently, this is the most breach-resistant authentication system out there. Its main drawback has been the difficulty of syncing passkeys across different ecosystems, like Windows and iOS, but the updated version of Kaspersky Password Manager can now save and sync passkeys across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices, making that issue a thing of the past.

Don’t overlook device security

Even a complex password and 2FA aren’t reasons to let your guard down. An attacker can infect your device with an infostealer: malware designed to swipe things like session cookies from your browser, app configuration files, and other sensitive data. Session cookies allow you to stay signed in without re-entering your credentials every time; however, if scammers get their hands on them, they can sign in to the service as you — even without knowing your username or password. This makes a proactive approach essential, especially if you use Chrome, Edge, Opera, or other Chromium-based browsers on Windows. We recommend installing Kaspersky Premium on all your devices; it includes Kaspersky Password Manager in addition to comprehensive protection against cyberthreats.

Only share subscriptions with people you trust

Otherwise, you might be asking for trouble. For example, if you share a Steam subscription with a friend who cheats, both of your accounts could end up banned. Furthermore, never try to let someone else into your personal account or individual subscription. Sharing your password with others is usually a violation of the terms of service, and can result in your account being blocked.

Make sure there are no strangers in your family group

To do this, periodically check active devices and sessions in your subscription settings. If you see an unrecognized device in the authorized list, terminate that session — or all of them — and change your account password immediately. Signing back in on a few devices is much easier than trying to recover a hijacked account.

And remember: don’t let your own habits compromise your security. If you’re visiting friends, on vacation, or on a business trip and use a local computer or smart TV — or if you sign in to your account from a public computer — don’t forget to sign out when you’re done. Otherwise, the next person to use that device might find themselves with free subscriptions or, even worse, access to your email or cloud photo stream.

Don’t take the bait

Watch out for phishing emails and messages spoofing legitimate services. If you receive a notification about a “need to update your billing details”, or a claim that a “new user has been added” to your family plan, don’t rush to click any links or open attachments. Links can lead to a phishing page, and attachments may hide malware. Scammers often use email addresses and domains that look nearly identical to the real ones — for instance, by swapping l (lowercase L) for I (uppercase i), or using a familiar name in a different domain zone.

Unfortunately, phishing pages are often indistinguishable from the originals now that AI is being used for high-quality design and layout. Since spotting every red flag yourself is increasingly difficult, it’s best to delegate anti-phishing protection to Kaspersky Premium. It will alert you to suspicious sites, saving your money and keeping your peace of mind.

Lastly, some scammers lure users in with freebies like fake gift subscriptions for Telegram Premium. The victim is asked to visit a phishing page mimicking the Telegram login screen and sign in to their account to claim the gift. The result isn’t hard to guess: instead of a premium subscription — a hijacked account. Recently, scammers have even learned to use mini-apps to steal credentials directly inside Telegram under various pretexts — ranging from gift giveaways to claims that you must move to a new chat because the old one was blocked.

Avoid buying subscriptions from third-party sellers

You can often find subscription offers on marketplaces and retail platforms at prices significantly lower than what the official provider charges. More likely than not, that tempting price hides a hacked account or a family group that you could be kicked out of at any moment, because the family admin is either the seller or a random user. Furthermore, sharing a family plan with strangers from around the world is a violation of terms for many services.

How to get rid of unwanted subscriptions

Now that we’ve covered subscription security, what about those extra subscriptions that quietly eat away at your balance every month? Research shows that users typically underestimate how many active subscriptions they have and how much they spend on them; they also frequently forget to cancel auto-renewals for subscriptions they no longer use, or auto-charges after the trial period ends.

If you suspect you’re in that boat, start your investigation with your own bank statements. Recurring charges for the same amount can be a subscription you’ve forgotten about. Check who received the payment; if the name doesn’t ring a bell, do an online search on the company. It’s also worth searching your email box for the merchant name or the payment amount; this can help you track down subscription notifications and figure out what exactly you’re paying for. And don’t forget to check your spam folder, as that’s where subscription alerts often end up.

Now, let’s look at how to check and cancel active subscriptions purchased through the App Store and Google Play.

For Android users

1. Open Settings on your device.
2. Tap Google, then tap your profile picture, and go to Google Account.
3. Go to Wallet & subscriptions.

If you’re the family group manager, you’ll be able to see the purchase history for other family members.

For iOS users

1. Open Settings on your device.
2. Tap your profile picture at the top of the menu.
3. Go to Subscriptions.

Note: to manage your iCloud subscription, you’ll need to go to the specific iCloud section located just below Subscriptions. In the Family Sharing section, if you’re the one who set it up, you can view the subscription and purchase history for all family members.

Read more on subscriptions:

• You’ve been sent a “gift” — a Telegram Premium subscription
• How to share subscriptions without tears
• How to control your subscriptions and save money
• Meet the Trojan subscribers hungry to sign you up

Every year, hundreds of millions of real user passwords leak onto the dark web. We analyzed 231 million unique passwords from dark-web leaks between 2023 and 2026, and the conclusions are bleak: the vast majority are extremely weak. To crack 60% of these passwords, a hacker needs only an hour and a few dollars in their pocket. Furthermore, password cracking is accelerating by the year; in our similar 2024 study, the percentage of vulnerable passwords was lower.

Today we’re looking at just how reliable the average password is (spoiler: not really), and how you can secure your data and accounts using more robust methods. At the same time, we’ll highlight the patterns most commonly found in actual user passwords.

How passwords are cracked

In our previous study, we detailed the methods for storing and cracking passwords, but here’s a quick refresher on the essentials.

These days, passwords are almost never stored in plain text. For instance, if you create an account with the password “Password123!”, the server won’t store it as-is. Instead, the password is hashed using specific algorithms, turning it into a fixed-length string of letters and numbers (a hash) which is what actually stays on the server. For example, here’s what the MD5 hash for “Password123!” looks like:

2c103f2c4ed1e59c0b4e2e01821770fa.

Every time the user enters their password, it’s converted into a hash and compared against the one stored on the server; if the hashes match, the password is correct. If an attacker gets their hands on this hash, they have to decrypt it to recover the original password — this is what’s known as “password cracking”. This is typically done using owned or rented GPUs, and several methods can be employed for the crack:

• Exhaustive enumeration (brute force). The computer tries every possible combination of characters, calculating the hash for each one. This method is the easiest way to crack short passwords, or those consisting of a single character set (such as digits only).
• Rainbow tables. A total nightmare for anyone with a simple password, this is essentially a “phone book” for passwords whose hashes have already been cracked via brute force or smart algorithms. All an attacker has to do is find a matching hash and see which password corresponds to it.
• Smart cracking. These algorithms are trained on databases of leaked passwords. They understand the frequency of different character combinations, and run their checks from the most likely to the least popular sequences. They account for dictionary words, character substitutions (a → @ or s → $), and consider common password structures like “dictionary word + number + special character”, while checking hashes against rainbow tables. Combining these methods significantly accelerates the cracking process.

Beyond that, attackers can also intercept passwords in plain text. There are numerous ways to do this, ranging from phishing (where a victim is lured to a fake web page and enters their password voluntarily) and keyloggers that capture keystrokes, to stealers or Trojans that swipe documents, cookies, clipboard data, and more. Unfortunately, many users keep their passwords as plain text in notes, messaging apps, and documents, or save them in browsers where attackers can extract them in seconds.

Every year, we track around a hundred million plain-text password leaks. We use these databases to warn Kaspersky Password Manager users if their data has been compromised. To address the most frequent question we get on this: no, we don’t know our users’ passwords. We’ve explained in non-techie language exactly how we compare your passwords to leaked ones without actually knowing them — and why neither your passwords stored in Kaspersky Password Managernor even their hashes ever leave your device — in our overviews of our leak analysis technology and our password manager’s internal architecture. Give them a read; you’ll be surprised by just how elegant the design is.

60% of passwords are cracked in under an hour

We expanded the database from our previous study by an additional 38 million real passwords posted by attackers on dark-web forums and compared the results. Testing was conducted using a single RTX 5090 GPU for passwords hashed with the MD5 algorithm. The data for the analysis was obtained from our Digital Footprint Intelligence service. You can review the algorithm we used to assess password strength in our article on Securelist.

Unfortunately, passwords remain as weak as ever, while cracking them becomes faster and easier with every year. Today, 60% of passwords can be cracked in less than an hour; two years ago, that figure was 59%. But the truly frightening part is something else: nearly half of all passwords (48%) are cracked in less than a minute!

Cracking time	Percentage of passwords crackable within this time in 2024	Percentage of passwords crackable within this time today
Less than a minute	45%	48%
Less than an hour	59% (+14%)	60% (+12%)
Less than 24 hours	67% (+8%)	68% (+8%)
Less than a month	73% (+6%)	74% (+6%)
Less than a year	77% (+4%)	77% (+3%)
More than a year	23%	23%

Attackers owe this boost in speed to graphics processors, which grow more powerful every year. While an RTX 4090 in 2024 could brute-force MD5 hashes at a rate of 164 gigahashes (billion hashes) per second, the new RTX 5090 has increased that speed by 34% — reaching 220 gigahashes per second.

And although a high-end video card like that currently retails for several thousand dollars, the price tag isn’t much of a barrier: there are plenty of cheap cloud services available for renting GPU computing power. Depending on the configuration and the model, rental costs range from a few cents to a few dollars per hour. As we’ve seen, one hour is all an attacker needs to crack three out of every five passwords they’ve found in a leak. Plus, depending on the scale of the task, they can always rent ten or even a hundred GPUs instead of just one…

It’s worth noting that cracking every password in a dataset doesn’t take much longer than cracking a single one. During each iteration, once the attacker calculates a hash for a specific character combination, they check if that same hash exists anywhere in the dataset — and the larger the dataset, the easier it is to find a match. If a match is found, the corresponding password is flagged as “cracked”, and the algorithm moves along to the next one.

Which passwords are vulnerable?

The strength of any password depends on its length, content variety, and the randomness of that content. Passwords created by humans turn out to be the least resilient — unfortunately, humans are quite predictable. We use dictionary words and character combinations that smart algorithms have long since mastered, we avoid long random strings, and patterns can be found even in keystrokes we believe are random. Interestingly enough, passwords generated by AI still carry the fingerprints of a human approach; we covered this in a separate post on how to create a strong yet memorable password.

Password length is the primary factor affecting cracking time. As you can see from the table below, it takes less than 24 hours to crack almost any eight-character password.

But the predictability of your password is just as important. Think you’re boosting security by adding a number or a special character to a memorable word? You are, but only slightly. The patterns people use to create passwords are easily predictable and, at times, pretty amusing — though this is no laughing matter.

What we learned about password patterns

Analysis of over 200 million passwords revealed characteristic patterns that allow smart algorithms to crack user passwords with ease.

Pick a number

More than half of all passwords (53%) end with one or more digits, while nearly one in six (17%) starts with a number. Every eighth password (12%) contains sequences that look a lot like years — ranging from 1950 to 2030 — and one in ten (10%) specifically falls between 1990 and 2026. This most likely happens because folks add their birth year (or that of someone close), some other significant year, or the year they created the password or account. Fun fact: based on the distribution of these dates, it suggests that the most active internet users were born between 2000 and 2012.

However, among all numeric combinations, the most popular turned out to be… you guessed it: “1234”. Overall, patterns involving sequential keyboard presses (“qwerty, ,”ytrewq”, and the like) appear in 3% of passwords.

Special characters aren’t a silver bullet

Most password policies in recent years require at least one special character. The absolute winner in this category is the @ symbol: it appears in one out of every 10 passwords. The period (.) comes in second, followed by the exclamation point (!) in third.

Love rules the world… and Skibidi Toilet does too

Emotionally charged words often form the foundation of a password, and despite everything, positive words are more common. Frequently occurring examples include “love”, “angel”, “team”, “mate”, “life”, and “star”. That said, negativity pops up too — mostly in the form of common English swear words.

Interestingly, viral memes are reflected in passwords as well. Between 2023 and 2026, the use of the word Skibidi in passwords skyrocketed 36-fold! Naturally (see the link if it doesn’t seem natural), “toilet” saw a boost too, though to a lesser extent.

Users tend to keep their passwords unchanged for years

More than half of the passwords (54%) we identified in recent leaks have surfaced before. Part of this can be explained by the same data migrating from one dataset to another. However, there’s a much more troubling reason too: many users simply haven’t changed their passwords in years.

Analyzing the dates found within passwords shows that combinations containing the years from 2020 through 2024 remain popular. It seems people add the current year to their password when they create it — and then forget about it for several years. This actually allows us to calculate the average lifespan of a password: about three to five years.

This is a dangerous trend. For one, smart algorithms can crack much more complex passwords over that kind of timeframe. Secondly, the longer your password remains unchanged, the higher the probability it will leak — whether through a breach, malware infection, or a phishing attack.

The situation gets even worse when the same password is used across multiple accounts. In this case, attackers don’t even need to crack anything; they just need to find your password in a single leak and plug it into other sites.

How to protect your passwords and accounts

If you’ve realized while reading this post that your own passwords are among those easily crackable — don’t panic. We’ve put together a list of simple but essential tips for you.

Use a password manager

The weakest passwords are the ones people come up with themselves. Creating and memorizing hundreds of sequences of 16–20 random characters (since every site requires a unique, long password) is a daunting, unrealistic task.

That’s why you should delegate password generation and storage to our password manager. It doesn’t just create and store complex, randomized passwords in an encrypted format; it also syncs them across all your devices. To decrypt your vault, you only need to remember one main password that no one knows but you — our guide on mnemonic passwords can help you with that.

Don’t store passwords as plain text

Whatever you do, never write down passwords in files, messages, or documents. They lack the robust encryption provided by a password manager. Furthermore, these kinds of notes fall into the hands of attackers instantly if you happen to pick up a Trojan or an infostealer.

Don’t store passwords in your browser

Many users save their passwords in their browsers — especially since they conveniently offer to do it automatically. Unfortunately, research shows that malware has evolved to extract these passwords from all popular browsers almost instantly. Kaspersky Password Manager can help you import saved passwords from your favorite browser — just follow our simple, three-step guide. Most importantly, don’t forget to clear the browser’s password storage once the import is complete.

Switch to passkeys

Wherever possible, use passkeys — a cryptographic replacement for passwords. In this setup, the service stores a public key, while the private key remains on your device and is never transmitted. During login, the device simply signs a one-time request. Additionally, passkeys are tied to a specific domain, meaning phishing attacks using spoofed addresses won’t work. Kaspersky Password Manager allows you to store both passwords and passkeys, solving the problem of syncing them across different ecosystems, including Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS.

Set up two-factor authentication

Enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Even if your password is compromised, a properly configured 2FA setup makes it extremely difficult for the attacker to access your account. For maximum security, skip the one-time codes sent via SMS and use authenticator apps instead — and yes, Kaspersky Password Manager comes in handy here, too.

Practice good digital hygiene

Remember, storing your passwords correctly is only half the battle. It’s crucial to follow the rules of digital hygiene: avoid downloading unverified files, pirated software, cheats, or cracks, and don’t click on random links. The number of infostealer attacks has been steadily rising in recent years, which means you need a robust security solution for full protection. We recommend Kaspersky Premium — it protects all your devices from Trojans, phishing, and other threats. Besides, the subscription includes our password manager.

For those serious about account security, check out our collection of posts on passwords, passkeys, and two-factor authentication:

• Passkeys in 2025: your complete guide to passwordless sign-in
• Passkeys in 2025: tips for power users
• Creating an unforgettable password
• How to create strong passwords and where to store them
• Switching to Kaspersky: a step-by-step migration guide

Malicious actors have developed a new way to steal data stored by Chrome for Windows. Researchers discovered the technique while analyzing a fresh build of an infostealer known as VoidStealer. The new method allows the malware to bypass Chrome’s Application-Bound (App-Bound) Encryption (ABE), a mechanism intended to protect session cookies and other valuable information stored in the browser.

Google hoped this mechanism would secure the master key Chrome uses to encrypt all sensitive data. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time malware authors have found a workaround for this defense — leaving secrets stored in Chrome vulnerable once again.

How App-Bound Encryption works in Chrome

Google introduced App-Bound Encryption in July 2024 with the release of Chrome version 127. The company’s announcement mentioned infostealers snatching cookies from Chrome users on Windows as the primary problem ABE was intended to solve. We’ve already covered in detail what these files are and the consequences of their theft, so we’ll only briefly recap the main facts here.

Cookies are small files that the browser saves to the user’s device at a website’s request to remember various site settings. Of particular value to attackers are session cookies, which are used for automatic authentication on websites. It’s thanks to these files that we don’t have to enter a username and password every time we revisit a site.

But this convenience carries a risk: stealing these files allows an attacker to use an already-authenticated session without entering a username or password. This allows them to impersonate the user, which can lead to account hijacking, theft of personal or financial data, and other adverse consequences.

Infostealer Trojans are particularly dangerous for Chrome users on Windows. This is because, on this OS, Chrome previously relied solely on the standard built-in Data Protection API (DPAPI). With this system encryption mechanism, applications don’t need to create and store encryption keys to protect data.

The limitation of DPAPI is that it doesn’t protect data from malware that’s already successfully compromised the system and is capable of executing code on behalf of the logged-in user. This is exactly what stealers exploit: since they typically run with the user’s privileges, they can simply request DPAPI to decrypt the browser’s protected data.

The ABE mechanism was designed to solve that specific problem. The core idea is right in the name: App-Bound Encryption means the encryption is tied to a specific application. To achieve this, a separate service running with system privileges is responsible for protecting the key used to encrypt Chrome’s data. It verifies which application is requesting access to the key, and denies the request if it doesn’t originate from Chrome.

As a result, the architects of this feature assumed that to access ABE-protected browser data, an infostealer would either need to escalate its privileges to system-level, or inject malicious code directly into Chrome. In theory, this should have made attacking Chrome significantly harder and reduced the effectiveness of mass-market infostealers. As you might have guessed, things didn’t go quite that smoothly in practice.

Previous successful bypasses of Chrome’s ABE

Just a couple of months after Google announced the implementation of App-Bound Encryption in Chrome, many infostealer developers claimed they’d already bypassed the protection. Among them were the creators of Meduza Stealer, Whitesnake, Lumma Stealer, and Lumar (also known as PovertyStealer).

Of course, you shouldn’t take malware developers at their word, but legitimate security researchers were able to confirm at least some of the claims. Bypasses for Google Chrome’s new data protection feature did become available almost immediately after its release.

A month later, in October 2024, tech enthusiast Alex Hagenah published a tool on GitHub called Chrome-App-Bound-Encryption-Decryption to bypass Google’s new security mechanism. Analysis of the tool’s code revealed that its author used roughly the same methods that attackers were already heavily exploiting.

What followed was a game of cat and mouse: security researchers and stealer developers came up with new tricks to circumvent App-Bound Encryption, while Google patched the newly discovered loopholes with varying degrees of success.

VoidStealer — a new data-nabbing menace

This brings us to recent events: in March 2026, news broke about a stealer named VoidStealer, which utilizes a brand-new and, by all accounts, highly effective method for bypassing ABE.

The malware authors developed an attack technique that targets the brief moment when the master key sits in the browser’s memory in plaintext. This occurs because, at a certain point, the browser inevitably has to decrypt its data to actually use it — for instance, to automatically sign in to a website with the relevant session cookie or to access saved credentials.

To exploit this window of opportunity, the malware attaches itself to the Chrome process as a debugger — a tool that allows one to control a program’s execution, pause it, and inspect its memory. In legitimate scenarios, these tools are used by developers to find and fix bugs, analyze application behavior, and test performance.

The malware identifies the specific section of code where data decryption takes place. It then sets a breakpoint at that location; when the program’s execution reaches that point, the browser effectively freezes. This is how the malware catches the exact moment the master key is sitting in RAM in plaintext; it then reads the key directly from memory.

It’s worth noting that everything mentioned above also applies to other Chromium-based browsers that use ABE, including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and others.

How to avoid falling victim to infostealers

The scale of VoidStealer’s reach could be significant, as its developers operate under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model. This means they rent out the ready-made tool to other attackers, so they don’t need to develop custom malware from scratch.

This situation demonstrates that relying solely on built-in security mechanisms isn’t enough. Unfortunately, stealer developers are coming up with new workarounds faster than browser and operating system developers can roll out patches.

Here’s what users can do about it:

• Avoid installing programs from suspicious sources. This will minimize the chances of malware infiltrating your system.
• Learn how ClickFix attacks Lately, stealers have frequently been distributed using this specific malicious tactic.
• Keep your OS and software updated on all devices. Timely updates help patch many of the vulnerabilities that malware exploits.
• Install a robust security solution on all your devices. It’ll block suspicious activity in real time and alert you to potential threats.

As an added precaution, avoid storing passwords and bank card info in Google Chrome or your Notes app, as these are the first places any self-respecting stealer looks. Instead, use a secure password manager.

Stealers are hunting for your data, finding ways to infiltrate both computers and smartphones alike. To protect yourself from theft, check out our other related posts:

• Crypto thieves ramping up attacks on Apple users
• CrystalX RAT can flip your screen and steal your crypto
• Android Trojan posing as government services and Starlink apps
• Stealka stealer: the new face of game cheats, mods, and cracks
• Your cat pics are at risk: the threat posed by the new SparkKitty Trojan

It’s best to think of the modern car as a computer on wheels — one that constantly offloads diagnostic data to the manufacturer or dealer’s servers. On board, you’ll find dozens of sensors: everything from GPS, speedometers, and hands-free microphones, to external cameras and the less obvious (but highly active) sensors for pedal pressure, tire pressure, engine temperature, and more. Even if this data isn’t beamed to the manufacturer in real-time, it’s logged in the car’s internal memory, and can reveal a wealth of information about a driver’s trips, habits, and surroundings. We’ve already taken a deep dive into how automakers collect data for commercial use, and who they sell it to (spoiler alert: insurance companies are the biggest buyers of telemetry), but today we’re looking at how law enforcement and intelligence agencies tap into this goldmine.

Digital evidence

Police departments across the globe have recognized the immense value of data stored within vehicles. If a car or its owner is potentially linked to a crime, investigators do more than just check for prints or DNA. Car Intelligence (CARINT) technology allows them to essentially scour all onboard computers, extracting data such as:

• GPS-based trip history
• Call logs, media player activity, and voice commands
• Lists of paired devices and synced contact lists
• Driving statistics: mileage, engine performance modes, and other technical parameters

There are numerous precedents where this data has served as evidence and dismantled alibis. In one U.S. criminal case, a recorded voice command became a smoking gun, proving the suspect was behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle.

With the rise of connected cars equipped with their own SIM cards and direct links to the manufacturer, law enforcement no longer needs physical access to the vehicle. Key data, such as GPS location history, can be pulled directly from the manufacturer’s servers. Furthermore, a U.S. Senate investigation revealed that nine out of 14 surveyed automakers were providing this data without a warrant.

Major suppliers of car intelligence software, such as Ateros, Berla, TA9/Rayzone, and Toka, sell their solutions exclusively to government and law enforcement agencies, which is why they’ve remained largely out of the public eye.

Comprehensive surveillance

To track persons of interest, data pulled from the vehicle itself is cross-referenced with information from other sources. According to media leaks, flagship products in this category aggregate data from the car’s SIM card, Bluetooth communication trails, street-level CCTV footage, and commercially available information from data brokers. This hybrid dataset simplifies the comprehensive mapping of a target’s movements and contacts. Journalists have discovered that some companies even market the ability to activate a vehicle’s microphones and cameras remotely and covertly, enabling real-time eavesdropping on conversations. However, experts note that due to the diversity of technical implementations across different systems, hacking the car itself remains a difficult task with no sure way of succeeding. Often, it’s simpler to correlate other, more accessible datasets to achieve the same result.

Factory-installed spy tools

Features like covert activation of cameras, microphones, and other sensors may theoretically be part of a vehicle’s stock functionality rather than the result of a hack. While we haven’t found any public evidence of such cases, it’s well known that Chinese-made vehicles are coming under increased scrutiny in several countries. For instance, they’ve been banned from Israeli military sites — with the exception of a single Chery model, provided its multimedia system is removed. Similar bans exist in the UK and Poland; furthermore, UK Ministry of Defense employees are instructed not to connect their work phones to Chinese-made cars. In Germany, security analyses of Chinese vehicles were conducted by the specialized agencies BfV and ZITiS, but the findings remain classified.

Low-cost surveillance

Tracking a vehicle — or even thousands of them — doesn’t necessarily require hacking onboard systems or tapping into vast networks of license plate readers. A recent scientific study demonstrated that innocent tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) provide enough data for effective tracking. Data from these sensors is transmitted via radio without any encryption and includes a unique ID that makes identifying a specific car easy. This allows for more than just confirming the vehicle’s movement; it can even be used to estimate the driver’s weight or determine if they are traveling alone. While this might not sound as impressive as remotely accessing a car’s cameras, it requires very little financial investment and works even on relatively old vehicles without an internet connection.

What you can do about vehicle tracking

While tracking a person through their car is undoubtedly a privacy risk, striking a balance in mitigating this threat is difficult: many measures are complex, largely ineffective, and simultaneously reduce the utility, safety, and convenience of a modern vehicle. Consequently, any steps taken should be weighed against your personal risk profile.

To reduce the risk of data leaks, check the privacy settings in the manufacturer’s app, the car’s infotainment system, and your connected smartphone. A connected car can transmit data about its operation to the cloud: information about trips, location, driving style, vehicle condition, and the operation of its components. Some of this data is necessary for navigation, diagnostics, and service, but not all permissions are required — check your settings and disable the transmission of data not related to the functions you need.

Be careful with permissions for access to the microphone, camera, contacts, messages, and geolocation. Only connect your own devices to the car and don’t save other people’s phones or unfamiliar Bluetooth devices in the system. When syncing your smartphone, select only the features you need — such as calls, music, and navigation — rather than granting full access to all your phone’s data.

Do not use the services of technicians who offer to “unlock” your car, reflash electronic control units, or install unofficial software to expand features, increase power, or otherwise interfere with the car’s operation. Such software has not been tested by the manufacturer: it may behave unpredictably, collect and transmit your data to malicious actors, disable security features, or affect critical vehicle systems — including steering, braking, or engine operation.

And when choosing a new car, ask the dealer not only about the number of stars in NCAP safety tests, engine power, or fuel economy, but also about the cybersecurity technologies used in the vehicle. Solutions such as the Kaspersky Automotive Secure Gateway, based on KasperskyOS, will provide the necessary protection for new cars against cyberthreats.

What other threats do connected cars hide? Read more in our posts:

• Highway to… hacked: cyberthreats to connected cars
• Car hacking via Bluetooth
• Botnets on wheels: the mass hacking of dashcams
• How millions of Kia cars could be tracked
• I know how you drove last summer
• Spies on wheels: how carmakers collect and then resell information