A researcher found that Yarbo yard robots came with a host of vulnerabilities which, among others, allowed an attacker to harvest WiFi passwords.

Security researcher Andreas Makris found he could remotely hijack thousands of Yarbo yard robots worldwide, and proved it by having his mower run him over. The root cause was a cluster of “legacy” design choices: every robot shared the same hardcoded root password, remote tunnels were left open, and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging was so weakly protected that once you had one device, you effectively had the worldwide fleet.

An attacker could pull GPS coordinates, email addresses, and Wi‑Fi passwords, turn cameras into remote spying tools, and even re‑arm the mower after someone hit the emergency stop. 

All of this was enabled by a persistent backdoor tunnel that users could neither see nor meaningfully control. The risks fell into three very different buckets:

• A heavy mower with remotely controllable blades and an emergency stop that can be bypassed is a real-world safety hazard.
• Exposed telemetry meant attackers could map where devices were, see who owned them, and in some reports even view camera feeds.
• Network abuse through shared root credentials meant compromised robots could scan local networks, steal more data, or be folded into a botnet.

Yarbo’s public response is unusually detailed for a consumer Internet of Things (IoT) vendor. It’s also refreshingly blunt in admitting that the researcher’s core findings were accurate. The company temporarily disabled the remote diagnostic tunnels, reset root passwords, locked down unauthenticated endpoints, and began ripping out unnecessary legacy access paths.

More importantly, Yarbo promises structural changes:

• Unique per‑device credentials.
• Over-the-Air  (OTA) credential rotation.
• Audited, allowlist‑based remote diagnostics.
• Dedicated security contact, with a possible bug bounty to follow.

That is the sort of long‑term security hygiene we rarely see spelled out this clearly after an IoT fiasco.

From a disclosure and remediation standpoint, Yarbo is doing many things right: crediting the researcher, apologizing, prioritizing fixes, and explaining both short‑term patches and long‑term architectural changes in human language. For buyers of connected devices with blades, that level of transparency is a positive precedent.

But Yarbo has explicitly chosen to keep a remote access tunnel, although wrapped in better controls and logs, instead of offering users the option to remove or fully opt out of it.

How to secure IoT devices

The vulnerabilities uncovered in the Yarbo case present an almost a live-action demo of what the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act is trying to prevent in US government deployments. While the Act doesn’t apply to Yarbo directly, its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-driven requirements map neatly onto what went wrong here.

So, it’s still up to users to make sure you:

• Change the default credentials.
• Check if the vendor will make updates available and how easy it is to install them before buying an IoT product. And then install the updates when available.
• If you can, put your IoT devices on a separate network. Use a guest Wi‑Fi or separate VLAN when available.
• Disable what you don’t need. Turn off UPnP, remote access, cloud control, and unnecessary services if you’re not actively using them.
• If your router or security suite logs connections from IoT devices, skim those logs for odd spikes or unknown destinations.

---

Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance. 

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• Microsoft says Edge’s plaintext password behavior is “by design”
• ShinyHunters escalates Canvas attacks with school login defacements
• Massive AI investment scam network spans 15,500 domains
• If a fake moustache can fool age checks, is the Online Safety Act working?
• Google Chrome’s silent 4GB AI download problem
• Attackers adopt JavaScript runtime Bun to spread NWHStealer
• Millions of students’ personal data stolen in major education breach
• Update WhatsApp now: Two new flaws could expose you to malicious files
• Cyberattacks are raising your prices (Lock and Code S07E09)
• Thousands of Facebook accounts stolen by phishing emails sent through Google
• The 2026 World Cup scam economy is already running before the first whistle

Stay safe!

---

Browse like no one’s watching. 

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN encrypts your connection and never logs what you do, so the next story you read doesn’t have to feel personal. Try it free → 

Some time ago, we discussed whether you should allow your browser to remember your passwords.

In that article we mentioned the importance of encryption.

“With a browser password manager, someone with access to your browser could see your passwords in clear text, although Windows can be set to ask for authentication (the same you use at startup of your device).”

The typical behavior of browser password managers is to store passwords encrypted on disk, tied to your user account, and protected by the operating system.

But recently, a security researcher systematically tested every major Chromium-based browser for how they handle credentials in memory. The researcher found that Edge was the only one loading the entire password vault into plaintext process memory at startup, where it remains for the duration of the session.  

Chrome and other Chromium browsers were observed to only decrypt a password when needed (autofill or “show password”), not the whole vault, and to use mechanisms like app‑bound encryption for keys. Edge does not use those protections in this context.

So, the researcher decided to write a proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrating that accessing that vault doesn’t rely on zero-days or complex exploitation. It relies on the relatively simple ability to read process memory, which does require elevated privileges.

But when the researcher reported the issue to Microsoft, the response was underwhelming. The company’s official response was that the behavior is “by design.” The reasoning most likely is that this behavior speeds up sign‑in and autofill, and attackers would already need a compromised machine or elevated access to read RAM, which Microsoft treats as out of scope for this design decision.

Which is basically true. An attacker already needs significant foothold: for example, code execution on the box and the ability to read Edge’s process memory, often requiring elevated privileges. This is not a remote, unauthenticated bug in the browser, but the design makes post‑compromise credential harvesting easier. And it’s a capability many infostealers already have.

It’s just another thing an attacker can do once they’ve compromised your machine. Combined with this academic study from 2024, which found many password managers leak plaintext passwords into memory under some conditions, it leads us to repeat our advice.

Should you allow your browser to remember your passwords?

Your browser password manager gives you ease of use, but that costs you some security. Of course, password managers aren’t foolproof either, so it’s important to decide for yourself where you store your passwords.

If you’re confident the website is safe, and anyone that can access it under your account won’t learn anything new, feel free to store the password in your browser, but disable autofill so you stay in control.

Use MFA where possible. It enormously reduces the risk should someone get hold of your password. And refrain from using the browser password manager to store your credit card details or other sensitive personally identifiable information, such as medical information.

But we’d add that, among the major browsers, Edge appears to be the weakest option if you still choose to use a built‑in password manager.

---

Stop threats before they can do any harm.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocks phishing pages and malicious sites automatically. Free, one click to install. Add it to your browser →

Days after confirming a major data breach, Instructure is now facing a second blow.

Earlier this week, Instructure confirmed a major data breach affecting its cloud‑hosted Canvas environment, with the ShinyHunters group claiming it stole hundreds of millions of records tied to thousands of schools and universities worldwide. As discussed in our earlier blog, that incident involved data such as student and staff records, enrollment details, and private messages allegedly accessed through Canvas export features and APIs. At that stage, the focus was on large‑scale data theft and the long‑term risks for affected students and families, including identity fraud and highly targeted phishing.

According to new reporting, ShinyHunters has now hit Instructure again, this time moving from quiet data theft to very visible extortion. Using another vulnerability in Instructure’s systems, the attackers were able to modify Canvas login portals for hundreds of educational institutions, defacing both web logins and the Canvas app with an on‑screen ransom message.

The message both claimed responsibility for the earlier breach and set a deadline of May 12 for Instructure and affected schools to contact the gang or risk the public release of stolen data.

This second wave matters for two reasons. First, it confirms that ShinyHunters still has meaningful access to Instructure’s environment, or at least to components that control the look and behavior of school login pages. Second, it marks a clear escalation in pressure tactics, from leaked claims and dark web posts to messages shown directly to students, parents, and staff trying to access their courses.

How to deal with this data breach

For students and families, the practical advice from our original blog still applies:

• Reset Canvas‑related passwords
• Enable multi‑factor authentication where possible
• Monitor financial and credit activity as children get older
• Stay wary of highly personalized phishing that references real schools, courses, or teachers

For schools and districts, this latest extortion campaign underlines the need to coordinate closely with Instructure, review single sign-on (SSO) integrations, and prepare clear communications so that any future defacements or data leaks do not catch staff and parents by surprise.

---

---

Researchers tracked a large AI‑themed investment scam campaign involving more than 15,000 domains. It uses cloaking and deepfakes to hide from security tools while targeting ordinary users.

Criminals abused the Keitaro ad-tracking platform as part of a cloaking system so real victims see scam content, while security scanners, ad reviewers, and some random visitors see harmless pages, making the operation hard to detect and shut down.

Keitaro is a commercial tracking platform originally meant for digital marketers to manage ad campaigns, test which ads work best, and route visitors to different landing pages.

Because it is feature rich, easy to spin up on regular hosting, and built to filter and route traffic, criminals found they can abuse those capabilities to run scams at scale.

Traffic starts in many places. The scammers used compromised websites, spam emails, social media posts, and online ads, all quietly routing through the same tracking infrastructure.

The scam sites typically promise “Smart AI Trading Technology” or “Intelligent Trading Solutions” and claim consistently high returns, often reinforced with deepfake images or fabricated media to look more credible.

Some parts of the campaign now use deepfake videos and fake interviews with well-known public figures, making it look like a celebrity, or finance expert personally endorses the platform.

Once you follow a link, the cloaking part of the operation kicks in. Cloaking is the trick that makes these scams so hard to see from the outside.

When you click an ad or link, your visit passes through a traffic distribution system (TDS), a kind of router for web visitors that decides which page you see. In these cases, the TDS is connected to the tracker.

The system checks things like:

• Your country/region
• Your device and browser
• Where you came from (Facebook ad, Google ad, email link, etc.)
• Sometimes your IP address reputation or other subtle fingerprints

You’re shown the real investment scam landing page only if you match the “ideal victim” profile (for example, a regular consumer in a target country coming from a social media ad).

Everyone else, like a security researcher, ad platform reviewer, or automated scanner, gets shown a benign page, like a generic blog or placeholder site.

How to stay safe

The best way to stay safe is to stay informed about the tricks scammers use. Learn to spot the red flags that almost always give away scams and phishing emails, and remember:

• There is no such thing as a risk-free, consistently profitable investment. If you’re looking to invest, navigate directly to known, regulated financial institutions.
• Deepfakes are very convincing nowadays, so you will hardly be able to tell the difference between the real celebrity and their deepfake persona.
• Don’t act upon unsolicited investment advice, whether it reaches you by email, social media, or sponsored search results.
• Use an up-to-date, real-time anti-malware solution with a web protection component or a reputable tracking and ad-blocker.
• Don’t act on impulse or under time pressure. Always properly research where your money will be going.

Pro tip: Malwarebytes Scam Guard can help you recognize and analyze scams.

---

Stop threats before they can do any harm.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocks phishing pages and malicious sites automatically. Free, one click to install. Add it to your browser →

A report based on a survey by the UK’s Internet Matters shows that much of the responsibility for managing the online safety of children still falls on families.

The Online Safety Act came into effect in July, 2025, and the report explores what has changed in the online lives of UK families since then.

We discussed in December 2025 whether the privacy risks of age verification outweighed the enhanced child protection. While the report shows some progress, it mostly provides “an early view of how the online landscape is changing, and crucially, where it is not.”

Around half of children say they now see more age-appropriate content, and roughly four in ten parents and children feel the online world has become somewhat safer.

The online world is as much a part of a child’s environment as the physical world is. And blocking the view to parts of that world is not taken lightly. Almost half of children think age checks are easy to bypass. About a third admit to doing so recently, using tactics from fake birthdates and borrowed logins to spoofed faces and, less commonly, VPNs.

“I did catch my son [12] using an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache on his face, and it verified him as 15 years old.”

Yet 90% of children who noticed improved blocking and reporting saw this as a good thing. Their support for these safety features is pragmatic. They point to:

• clearer rules
• restricted contact with strangers
• limits on high-risk functions

 They also rate these features as helpful in reducing exposure to harmful content and interactions.

But the system is not perfect. In the month after the child protection codes came into force, almost half of children reported some online harm, including violent, hateful, and body image-related content that should be covered by the Act’s protections.

The survey also revealed that age checks are now commonplace. Over half of children said they were asked to verify their age within a recent two-month window, often on major platforms like TikTok, YouTube/Google, and Roblox, on both new and existing accounts.

The technology is improving. Platforms use facial age estimation, government ID, and third-party age assurance apps, and these are usually easy for children to complete.

However, gains in protection come with unresolved and, in some cases, growing concerns around privacy and data use, especially around age verification and AI.

Parents are worried not just about what data is collected for age checks, but whether it will be stored or reused by government or industry. This has fueled calls for central, privacy-protective solutions rather than fragmented data collection across platforms.

Because age assurance systems are both intrusive (in terms of data) and often ineffective (easy workarounds, weak enforcement), the report suggests they may not yet provide a good safety-to-privacy trade-off from a family perspective.

Obviously, the survey also didn’t capture input from adults pretending to be children to gain access to child-only spaces, a risk that parents link directly to predatory behavior.

The authors conclude that the Online Safety Act has started to reshape children’s online environments, making safety features more visible and enabling more age‑appropriate experiences in some areas.

However, the Act has not yet produced a “step change.” Harmful content remains widespread, age‑assurance is patchy and easy to circumvent, and key concerns such as time spent online, AI risks, and persuasive design remain under‑regulated.

---

Browse like no one’s watching. 

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN encrypts your connection and never logs what you do, so the next story you read doesn’t have to feel personal. Try it free → 

Google Chrome has been quietly downloading a 4GB AI model onto users’ devices without asking first.

Security researcher Alexander Hanff, aka ThatPrivacyGuy, reports that Chrome has been silently installing Gemini Nano, Google’s on-device AI model, as a file called weights.bin stored in the OptGuideOnDeviceModel directory within users’ Chrome profiles. This 4GB download happens automatically when Chrome determines your device meets the hardware requirements. It does not ask for consent, and sends no notification—not even one of those annoying cookie banners you’ve learned to dismiss without reading.

The Gemini Nano model powers features like “Help me write” text composition assistance, on-device scam detection, and a Summarizer API that websites can call directly. These features are enabled by default in some recent Chrome versions. And here’s the kicker: if you discover the file and delete it, Chrome simply downloads it again.

Why this matters

Let’s start with the obvious problem: a 4GB download isn’t trivial for everyone. If you’re lucky enough to have unlimited fiber internet, you might not notice. But for users on metered connections, mobile hotspots, or in developing countries where data is expensive, Google just cost them real money without permission. For rural users or those with bandwidth caps, this kind of silent transfer can blow through monthly limits in minutes.

Hanff focuses on the environmental angle. He calculated that if this model were pushed to just 1 billion Chrome users (roughly 30% of Chrome’s user base), the distribution alone would consume 240 gigawatt-hours of energy and generate 60,000 tons of CO2 equivalent. That’s not including actually using the model, just the downloads.

But to us, the most troubling aspect is the broader pattern this represents. Just a few weeks ago, we reported another unsolicited AI invasion on our personal computers discovered by Hanff. He documented how Anthropic’s Claude Desktop app, which silently installed browser integration files across multiple Chromium browsers, including five browsers he didn’t even have installed. The integration would reinstall itself if removed, and it also happened without any meaningful user disclosure.

Hanff argues that both cases likely violate EU privacy law, specifically the ePrivacy Directive’s rules about storing data on user devices and the GDPR’s requirements around transparency and lawful processing. While these claims haven’t been tested in court, they highlight a fundamental tension: can companies just install whatever they want on your computer as long as they say it’s a feature of an app you installed?

Google might argue that having an AI on your device provides better privacy than cloud-based alternatives. Which is generally true, but it does not apply here, since Chrome’s most prominent AI feature—the “AI Mode” pill in the address bar—doesn’t even use the local model. According to Hanff’s analysis, it routes queries to Google’s cloud servers anyway. 

All in all, users see a 4GB local AI model and reasonably assume their data stays private, when in reality, the most visible AI feature sends everything to Google’s servers.

Tech companies need to stop treating silent deployment as acceptable practice. We see no valid excuse for this. Your device is yours. The storage is yours. The bandwidth is yours. And the electricity bill is yours.

What happened to asking for permission? And when I remove it, I want it gone permanently—not automatic reinstallation.

When are the tech giants going to learn that we don’t want to be left discovering after the fact that our devices have become deployment targets for features we never asked for.

Update May 12, 2026 with do it yourself instructions

How to check if the AI model is on your computer (Windows)

1. Open File Explorer
2. At the top of the File Explorer window, click the address bar and paste:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data

3. Press Enter
4. Look for a folder named:

OptGuideOnDeviceModel

5. If you see it, Chrome has likely downloaded the AI model

How to check on a Mac

1. Open Finder
2. In the menu bar at the top of the screen, click Go > Go to Folder
3. Paste:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/

4. Look for a folder named:

OptGuideOnDeviceModel

Now, remember, this isn’t malware, and its presence doesn’t mean your computer is infected.

Turn off Chrome AI features

This part is relatively easy. You may find online instructions telling you to edit the Windows registry or use Chrome policies, but for most people the simplest and safest approach is to disable the features directly in Chrome.

We don’t recommend manually editing the registry unless you fully understand what you’re doing. Incorrect changes can cause system problems.

Instead, try this first:

1. Open Chrome
2. You can copy and paste this directly into Chrome’s address bar and press Enter:

chrome://settings/ai

3. On the page that opens, you can turn off features such as:
   • “Help me write”
   • AI summaries
   • On-device AI features

 The exact options may vary depending on your Chrome version and region.

4. Then restart Chrome to make sure the changes take effect.

This may stop Chrome from downloading or using the AI model, although some users report the files can return after browser updates.

There is probably no need to delete the files unless you specifically need the storage space.

If chrome://settings/ai does not work, the feature may not yet be available in your region, you may be using a managed work or school account, or your version of Chrome may not support these settings yet.

Do you need to delete the OptGuideOnDeviceModel folder?

You can, but there is probably no need to.

If you disable Chrome’s AI features, the downloaded model should no longer be actively used for those features. Leaving the files in place may also prevent Chrome from downloading them again at a later point.

---

Browse like no one’s watching. 

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN encrypts your connection and never logs what you do, so the next story you read doesn’t have to feel personal. Try it free → 

Instructure, the company behind the Canvas learning management system (LMS), confirmed a cyber incident and subsequent data breach affecting its cloud‑hosted environment.

The ShinyHunters ransomware group claims it is behind the attack and says it stole roughly 275 million records tied to students, teachers, and staff.

The criminals shared a list of 8,809 school districts, universities, and online education platforms with BleepingComputer whose Canvas instances they claim were impacted, with per‑institution record counts ranging from tens of thousands to several million.

---

---

What to do if your child’s Instructure/Canvas data was exposed

If you’ve been told that your child was affected by the Instructure breach, you may be wondering what you can do to protect them. Here are some practical steps you can take right away.

1. Check what the school and Instructure are saying

Start with the notification from the school or district and Instructure’s own updates to understand what data about your child was involved (for example: name, email address, student ID, or course information). Follow any specific steps they recommend for student accounts and keep an eye on follow‑up messages in case new information comes to light.

Make sure the notification is real before anything else. If anything in the message looks suspicious, such as odd links, pressure to act immediately, or requests for extra data, check this first. Go to the district’s or Instructure’s site directly and use the contact details listed there to verify.

2. Lock down your child’s school and learning accounts

If your child has a Canvas or related account, change that password immediately, especially if your school lets students or parents log in with a username and password instead of single sign‑on. If your child tends to reuse passwords (for example, using the same one for Canvas, email, and gaming accounts), change those other passwords as well.

Give every account its own strong, unique password and consider using a family password manager so you can create and store these without relying on memory. For younger children, you may want to manage these credentials yourself and keep a list of which education platforms they use.

3. Turn on multi‑factor authentication where possible

Multi‑factor authentication (MFA) makes it much harder for someone to log into an account with just a password. If your school or district allows it on parent or student accounts (for example, a code sent by SMS, email, or generated in an authenticator app), turn it on and, ideally, have the codes go to a device or app you control.

Remind your child that security codes are like short‑term passwords. They should never share them with friends, teachers, or anyone claiming to be “IT support,” even if a message looks urgent or uses school branding.

4. Consider extra identity protection for minors

If the breach included very sensitive identifiers (such as national ID or Social Security numbers in some regions), ask both the school and the breached provider what protection is being offered for minors, such as credit monitoring or identity restoration services. In some countries, you can also place a credit freeze or similar block on a minor’s file to prevent new accounts being opened in their name.

Even if your child is too young to have a credit file today, it’s worth keeping a note of this incident so you remember to check their records once they are old enough.

5. Stay alert for follow‑on scams

Attackers like to reuse stolen data from education platforms to make phishing and scam messages more convincing, mentioning real school names, teachers, or courses. Be especially wary of emails and texts that claim to be from the school, district, or Instructure and that ask you to “confirm” login details, open unexpected attachments (like “new assignments”), or pay fees via unusual methods.

As a rule of thumb, avoid clicking links in unsolicited messages about the breach. Instead, open a new browser window and go to the official site or app as you normally would, then log in from there to check for messages.

---

Meta has published a new security advisory for messaging app WhatsApp, announcing patches for two vulnerabilities.

WhatsApp has fixed two security flaws that could be abused to interfere with how media and attachments are handled on your device. There is no evidence that either bug has been exploited in the wild.

These bugs don’t automatically infect devices, but they lower the barrier for social engineering and could be chained with other vulnerabilities for more serious attacks.

Malicious messages

The first issue, tracked as CVE‑2026‑23866, affects how WhatsApp processes AI‑generated “rich response messages” that embed Instagram Reels. On affected iOS and Android versions, incomplete validation means a specially crafted message could cause the app to load media from an attacker‑controlled URL. In some cases, this could trigger operating system‑level custom URL scheme handlers.

In other words: a booby‑trapped message could prompt your device to open content from an untrusted source.

How to update WhatsApp for Android

You can easily update WhatsApp from the Google Play Store.

1. Open the Google Play Store
2. Search for WhatsApp Messenger
3. Tap Update

Note: Updates may not be available immediately in all regions.

How to update WhatsApp on iOS

To update WhatsApp on iOS:

• Open the App Store
• Tap your profile icon
• Scroll to find WhatsApp and tap Update

If it’s not listed, search for WhatsApp to check if an “Update” button is available.

Misleading filenames

The second bug, CVE‑2026‑23863, affects WhatsApp for Windows before version 2.3000.1032164386.258709.

In this case, WhatsApp did not correctly handle filenames containing embedded NUL bytes. This could allow a file to appear as a harmless type in the interface while actually being treated as an executable when opened. That’s a classic recipe for social engineering: “click the PDF,” but get an .exe file.

How to update WhatsApp for Windows

You can find your WhatsApp for Windows version number by clicking on your profile picture and selecting Help and feedback.

If your version number is earlier than 2.3000.1032164386.258709, update via the Microsoft Store:

1. Click the Start menu and search for Microsoft Store to open it
2. Click Library located at the bottom-left corner
3. Find WhatsApp Desktop
4. Click Get Updates or Update

Once installed, restart the app to apply the changes.

Automatic updates on Windows

My WhatsApp was already up to date because I have automatic updates turned on. Here’s how to turn it on:

1. Click the Start menu and search for Microsoft Store to open it
2. Select Profile (your account picture) > Settings
3. Make sure App updates is toggled to On

---

Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once. 

Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection catches suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.

Researchers have uncovered a long-running phishing operation that abuses trusted Google services to hijack tens of thousands of Facebook accounts.

The compromised Facebook accounts are mainly business and advertiser profiles, which criminals can monetize after gaining access and control.

The attackers found a way to send phishing emails that come “through Google,” making them look legitimate at first glance. The emails are sent via Google’s AppSheet platform, so they pass the usual technical checks (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and many email filters treat them as trusted.

Google AppSheet is a development platform that lets people build mobile and web apps without writing code. It can automate workflows and notifications, typically used to send app-driven alerts and internal updates.

And that’s where the phishers abused it. The sender name can be customized, and the sending address may look something like noreply@appsheet.com, delivered through appsheet.bounces.google.com. To the average user, it looks like a perfectly normal notification, in these cases often about Facebook policy violations, copyright complaints, or verification issues.

Researchers linked these emails to a Vietnamese‑linked operation that has already compromised around 30,000 Facebook accounts and is still active.

The stolen accounts are mostly pages and business profiles that have financial value: advertising accounts, brand pages, and companies that rely on Facebook for marketing. Once inside, attackers run scams, place fraudulent ads, or sell access to others. In some cases, the same group offers “account recovery” services to fix the problems they created.

---

---

No matter the lure, the goal is the same: Facebook credentials, 2FA codes, and recovery data. The phishing sites are just the entry point. Behind them is a fairly industrial infrastructure built around Telegram bots and channels to collect and process stolen data.

How to stay safe

This campaign is not “just another phishing mail.” It is one more example of how attackers exploit the trust we place in major platforms.

Facebook does not send complaints, verification requests, security checks, job offers, and other urgent messages through Google infrastructure.

• Any email that claims your Facebook or Instagram account is about to be disabled, locked, or punished deserves extra scrutiny, especially if it demands action within 24 hours.
• If you get a worrying message about your account, go directly to facebook.com or the Facebook app. Don’t click links in the message.
• If a form asks for password, multiple 2FA codes, date of birthm phone number, and ID photos in one go, then stop. That’s the “full recovery pack” these attackers need to take over your account.
• Set up 2FA for Facebook and set up login alerts for new devices and locations.
• Be cautious with unusual messages from Facebook accounts. The account itself may be compromised.

Pro tip: Malwarebytes Scam Guard can help you spot phishing emails and messages on any platform. You can even use it in Claude and ChatGPT.

---

---

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• 3 easy-to-miss cybersecurity risks for small businesses
• Actively exploited cPanel bug exposes millions of websites to takeover
• More PayPal emails hijacked to deliver tech support scams
• Hackers stole hundreds of thousands of Roblox accounts: Here’s what to do
• Researchers built a chatbot that only knows the world before 1931
• Microsoft won’t patch PhantomRPC: Feature or bug?
• Scam-checking just got a lot easier: Malwarebytes is now in Claude
• Fake CAPTCHA scam turns a quick click into a costly phone bill
• Chinese engineer stole US military and NASA software for years

Stay safe!

---

---

Security researchers are warning about a newly discovered vulnerability in the widely used web server management software cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM). 

This is a critical, actively exploited authentication-bypass bug in cPanel/WHM that lets attackers gain administrative access to the interface without credentials, potentially take over servers and all hosted sites.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-41940, has been added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), meaning there is evidence it is being used in real-world attacks.

Because cPanel/WHM is used by over a million sites worldwide, including banks and health organizations, the potential impact is huge. In simple terms, the bug can act like a front‑door key to a big chunk of the web’s hosting infrastructure.

cPanel released patches on April 28, 2026, and urged all customers and hosts to update. It said all supported versions after 11.40 are affected, including DNSOnly and WP Squared.

Hosting providers including Namecheap, HostGator, and KnownHost temporarily blocked access to cPanel interfaces while patching, treating this as a critical authentication bypass and reporting exploit attempts going back to late February 2026.

How to stay safe

While it’s up to the hosting companies and website owners to patch as quickly as possible, there are ways to reduce your risk if a site you use is compromised.

As always, limit the data you share with websites to what’s absolutely necessary. Data they don’t have can’t be stolen.

When ordering from an online retailer, don’t tick the box to save your card details for future purchases as they will be stored on the server.

If there’s an option to check out as a guest, use it. It reduces the amount of personal data tied to an account.

Don’t reuse passwords. When one site is compromised, having the same credentials in several places turns it into a multi‑account takeover problem. A password manager can help you create complex unique passphrases, and remember them for you.

Where possible, pay by credit card. In many regions, this gives you stronger fraud protection.

---

---

When a site you trust gets hacked

If you think you’ve been affected by a data breach, take the following steps:

• Check the company’s advice. Every breach is different, so check with the company to find out what’s happened and follow any specific advice it offers.
• Change your password. You can make a stolen password useless to thieves by changing it. Choose a strong password that you don’t use for anything else. Better yet, let a password manager choose one for you.
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA). If you can, use a FIDO2-compliant hardware key, laptop, or phone as your second factor. Some forms of 2FA can be phished just as easily as a password, but 2FA that relies on a FIDO2 device can’t be phished.
• Watch out for impersonators. The thieves may contact you posing as the breached platform. Check the official website to see if it’s contacting victims and verify the identity of anyone who contacts you using a different communication channel.
• Take your time. Phishing attacks often impersonate people or brands you know, and use themes that require urgent attention, such as missed deliveries, account suspensions, and security alerts.
• Consider not storing your card details. It’s definitely more convenient to let sites remember your card details, but it increases risk if a retailer suffers a breach.
• Set up identity monitoring, which alerts you if your personal information is found being traded illegally online and helps you recover after.

---

Scammers have found another way to get deceptive messages delivered through PayPal’s legitimate services.

In December 2025, we reported that PayPal closed a loophole that let scammers send real emails with fake purchase notices.

In those cases, scammers created a PayPal subscription and then paused it, which triggered PayPal’s genuine “Your automatic payment is no longer active” notification. They also set up a fake subscriber account, likely a Google Workspace mailing list, which automatically forwarded any email it received to all other group members.

Recently, ConsumerWorld.org alerted us that tech support scammers have found a way to manipulate the subject line of PayPal payment notifications.

This is a screenshot of the example they sent us.

As you can see, the email comes from service@paypal.com. It wasn’t spoofed, which means it passes standard security checks (DKIM, SPF, DMARC).

While the body of the email says that you received a payment of ¥1 JPY (a whopping $0.0063), the subject line tells a different story:

“Pending charge of USD 987.90 for account activation. Questions? Call-(888) 607-0685.”

As an extra bonus for the scammers, the email contains personalized details—the recipient’s actual name and a real transaction ID.

The number in the subject line is not PayPal’s. The legitimate contact number appears inside the email.

---

---

The intention of the email is straightforward.

Recipients think:

1. “Oh no! There’s a pending charge for $987.90.”
2. “The amount doesn’t match what I see in the email body—that’s weird and scary.”
3. “I need to call this number immediately to dispute this charge.”

They call the number in the subject line, only to reach tech support scammers.

These scammers pretend to be PayPal support and may try to:

• Get you to “verify” payment methods
• Collect banking details
• Convince you to install remote access tools
• Take control of accounts or devices
• All of the above

How the subject line is altered is still unclear. Based on PayPal’s documented email behavior, subject lines are typically fixed and not meant to include arbitrary free text or phone numbers. Our findings indicate that the subject line was already weaponized at the point PayPal’s systems signed the email. If someone along the way had rewritten the subject, the dkim=pass header.d=paypal.com result would likely fail.

One possibility is that the scammer abused PayPal’s note or remittance field in a way that surfaces in certain payout templates, including the subject line and HTML <title>, even though normal merchant payment‑received emails don’t allow arbitrary subjects.

We have contacted PayPal for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

How to avoid PayPal scams

The best way to stay safe is to stay informed about the tricks scammers use. Learn to spot the red flags that almost always give away scams and phishing emails, and remember:

• Use verified, official ways to contact companies. Don’t call numbers listed in suspicious emails or attachments.
• Beware of someone wanting to connect to your computer remotely. One of the tech support scammer’s biggest weapons is their ability to connect remotely to their victims. If they do this, they essentially have total access to all of your files and folders.
• Report suspicious emails to PayPal. Send the email to phishing@paypal.com to support their investigations.

If you’ve fallen victim to a tech support scam:

• Paid the scammer? Contact your bank or card provider and let them know what’s happened. You can also file a complaint with the FTC or your local law enforcement, depending on your region.
• Shared a password? Change it anywhere it’s used. Consider using a password manager and enable 2FA for important accounts.
• Gave access to your device? Run a full security scan. If scammers had access to your system, they may have planted a backdoor so they can revisit whenever they feel like it. Malwarebytes can remove these and other software left behind by scammers.
• Watch your accounts: Keep an eye out for unexpected payments or suspicious charges on your credit cards and bank accounts.
• Be wary of suspicious emails. If you’ve fallen for one scam, they may target you again.

Pro tip: Malwarebytes Scam Guard recognized this email as a call back scam. Upload any suspicious text, emails, attachments, and other files to ask for its opinion. It’s really very good at recognizing scams. 

---

Something feel off? Check it before you click.  

Malwarebytes Scam Guard helps you analyze suspicious links, texts, and screenshots instantly.  

Available with Malwarebytes Premium Security for all your devices, and in the Malwarebytes app for iOS and Android.  

Try it free → 

More than 610,000 Roblox accounts were reportedly stolen. Was yours or your child’s among them?

Ukrainian police arrested three individuals in Lviv who allegedly orchestrated one of the largest Roblox account theft operations to date. Between October 2025 and January 2026, the hacking group is said to have compromised over 610,000 Roblox accounts, including at least 357 high-value “elite” accounts, making around $225,000 from selling access to them.

The hackers distributed infostealing malware disguised as game-enhancement tools, harvested login credentials from infected devices, and sold accounts through a Russian website and closed online communities based on their value.

This operation targeted Roblox accounts because they hold significant monetary value for many users. Accounts can contain high Robux balances, limited-edition items that can no longer be obtained, years of gaming progress with achievements and unlocks, and paid access to premium content. 

Roblox account recovery

If you recently downloaded any suspicious game enhancements or other Roblox-related software, your first priority is to run a full system anti-malware scan.

Then check for unknown or untrusted browser extensions. Keep only those that came from verified, trusted sources.

If the scans led to any removals, clear your browser history and cookies completely. Note that this will log you out of most websites.

If you still have access to your Roblox account, change your password and turn on two-step verification if you haven’t already.

If the hackers changed your password and you’re unable to log in, use the password recovery option on the Roblox login page by clicking “Forgot Password or Username?”. Enter the email address associated with your account and check your inbox (including spam folders) for the reset link.

After recovering access, immediately terminate all active sessions to prevent hackers from maintaining access through stolen cookies. Go to Settings > Security and click Log out of all other sessions at the bottom of the page. This ensures that anyone who had unauthorized access can no longer use your account.

If you’ve been completely locked out—because hackers have changed both your password and recovery details—contact Roblox Support immediately. Visit the Roblox support page and provide as much detail as possible. They may ask for:

• Your account username (this is crucial for identification).
• The original email address used to create the account.
• Payment information or purchase receipts showing Robux transactions.
• The approximate date and time of the compromise.
• Screenshots showing account details before the compromise, including creation date.
• Your previous account settings or any other details that prove ownership.

Roblox explicitly states that, unless required by law, it is under no obligation to restore compromised accounts. It does not guarantee that accounts will be returned to their previous state or that lost virtual items and currency can be recovered. Only in very limited circumstances may Roblox offer the ability to recover lost inventory or its approximate value. It’s important to note that you must contact Roblox within 30 days of the compromise if you want assistance recovering lost items or currency. The support process typically takes 2–5 days.

---

---

How to protect your Roblox account

There are a few steps that make it harder for someone to steal your Roblox account:

• Verified email address. Ensure your account has a verified email address that you actively monitor. This helps you spot unauthorized password or email changes quickly.
• Use unique passwords. Never reuse passwords across different accounts. If one is exposed elsewhere, attackers will try it on other platforms, including Roblox. Your Roblox password should be completely unique and stored securely. A password manager can help you with both.
• Don’t share access. Never share your password with anyone, even with people claiming to be friends. Your account credentials should belong only to you (and your parents if you’re a minor). Roblox staff will never ask for your password.
• Be wary of game enhancements, hacks, cracks and keys. The hackers in this case specifically distributed malware disguised as game-enhancement tools. Be extremely cautious about downloading any third-party programs, cheats, exploits, or tools that claim to improve your Roblox experience. These are often vehicles for credential theft and account compromise.
• Keep software updated. Keep all the software on your device up-to-date, so you’re protected against the latest known exploits.
• Use anti-malware. Run up-to-date, real-time anti-malware software to protect your device against information stealers and other malware.

---

Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance. 

The internet’s chatbots have read every forum rant, leaked Slack log, and confident blog post your uncle ever wrote about chemtrails. The results are predictable: they reflect the state of the internet, and it isn’t pretty. That, along with some questionable design decisions, is partly why Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot briefly generated antisemitic content and referred to “MechaHitler” during testing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a chatbot that only draws on knowledge from before the internet, reality TV, or AI-slop content ever existed? Three researchers have created just that: a chatbot that hasn’t read anything published after 1930.

Talkie is a 13-billion-parameter language model trained on digital scans of English-language texts published before the end of 1930. That cutoff aligns with the current US public domain year, meaning anything published until the end of that year is fair game and there are no lawsuits from irate IP-holders to worry about.

David Duvenaud, an associate professor of computer science and statistics at the University of Toronto, led the work with two collaborators. You can download it from GitHub or Hugging Face, or chat with it through a web interface, if you don’t mind a model whose mental map of the world ends with the Great Depression.

The model knows only what appears in books, newspapers, legal texts, and other publications before its cutoff date. So it’s great for questions about Prohibition or World War One. NASA’s first moon landing? Not so much.

Why bother?

The obvious question: why train an AI that doesn’t know what the Nazis did, what the internet is, or what an LLM even is?

These aren’t so much exercises to look at the “good old days” through rose-colored glasses so much as intellectual experiments. Nostalgia misrepresents the past, and the world was just as problematic back then, if not more so.

Duvenaud told The Register that such a model could be useful for examining how people might have interpreted laws or events at the time, using only the knowledge available then.

Another fun experiment: Use it to see whether a model can “rediscover” later breakthroughs using only earlier knowledge, as a way of probing the limits of AI reasoning.

Where it breaks

There are definite weaknesses in Talkie, which its inventors are well aware of.

For example, there was no digital publishing in 1930, so every word of Talkie’s corpus had to be transcribed from a scan. OCR is famously imperfect anyway, but more so on the blurry text printed back in the day.

It also leaks future information that can sometimes creep in from mislabeled future documents, despite the researchers’ best efforts. We asked it about television, which was just starting out in the late 1920s, and this is what happened:

But still, what an absorbing project. It isn’t alone, either. In their paper, the researchers mention other projects such as Ranke-4b from the University of Zurich, a series of LLMs with historical snapshots of data. “Trip” also created Mr Chatterbox, which he trained on a dataset of British literature from 1500–1900 to become, in his words, “a Victorian gentleman in silicon.” Magic.

These are both a fun experiment and a useful insight into the workings of AI. As the Talkie researchers put it:

“Have you ever daydreamed about talking to someone from the past? What would you ask someone with no knowledge of the modern world? What would they ask you?”

And they provide some fun-making opportunities. The nerd in us still wants to hook one of these things up to an Edwardian typewriter keyboard and a ticker tape, steampunk-style.

---

Your name, address, and phone number are probably already for sale.  

Data brokers collect and sell your personal details to anyone willing to pay. Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover finds them and gets your information removed, then keeps watch so it stays that way. 

A researcher has discovered a weakness called PhantomRPC that Microsoft does not consider a vulnerability it plans to patch.

PhantomRPC involves Windows Remote Procedure Call (RPC), the core of communication between Windows processes. The vulnerability lets a process with impersonation rights escalate to SYSTEM by impersonating high‑privileged clients that connect to a fake RPC server.

The researcher presented a detailed technical report outlining five exploitation paths, including coercion, user interaction, or background services. They warned that potential vectors are “effectively unlimited” because the root issue is architectural.

Microsoft, however, classified the issue as “moderate,” refused a bounty, declined to assign a CVE (a spot in the list of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), and closed the case without tracking. Its position is that the technique requires an already‑compromised machine and does not provide unauthenticated or remote access.

Experts disagreed with Microsoft’s assessment. Their concern is that Microsoft is downplaying a systemic local privilege escalation technique that exists in all supported Windows versions.

The issue

At the core of this issue is that the Windows RPC runtime does not sufficiently verify that the server a high‑privileged client connects to is the intended legitimate endpoint.

If a legitimate RPC server is not reachable (for example because the service stopped, was misconfigured, not installed, or due to a race condition), an attacker with SeImpersonatePrivilege can spin up a fake RPC server that “fills the gap” using the same interface and endpoint.

When a SYSTEM or high‑privileged client connects to this fake server, using an impersonation level that allows the server to impersonate the client, the attacker can call RpcImpersonateClient and immediately escalate their privileges to SYSTEM.

From Microsoft’s perspective, the ability to run a rogue RPC server in this way falls under the category of “already compromised.”

SeImpersonatePrivilege

To understand the issue better, we need to dig into what SeImpersonatePrivilege does.

Basically, SeImpersonatePrivilege is the Windows permission that lets a program “pretend to be you” after you’ve already logged in, so it can do things on your behalf using your level of access.

It’s needed because many system services and server‑type apps (file sharing, RPC servers, COM servers, web apps) have to perform actions on behalf of a user, like reading their files or applying group policy.

If an attacker gains this privilege, they can create a fake service or server and wait for a more powerful account to talk to it. When that high‑privilege service connects, the attacker can grab its security token and impersonate it, effectively upgrading from an account with lower privileges to full SYSTEM control on that machine.

Protection

A Microsoft spokesperson provided the following statement:

“This technique requires an already-compromised machine and does not grant unauthenticated or remote access. Any update is a balance between existing compatibility and customer risk, and we remain committed to continually hardening our products. We recommend customers follow security best practices, including limiting administrative privileges and applying the principle of least privilege.”

In our opinion, mitigating PhantomRPC properly would require deep changes to the RPC architecture, which is hard to do on existing Windows versions without breaking compatibility. It’s maybe something we’ll see in future versions, given the scale of change needed.

What you can do:

• As PhantomRPC is a piece in a larger chain, it is still very important to keep Windows updated.
• Use your admin account sparingly and only for the tasks that need that kind of privilege.
• Use an up-to-date, real-time anti-malware solution that can detect and block suspicious privilege‑escalation activity.
• Avoid disabling or “hardening” services blindly since a malicious service might step in their place.

To answer the question in the title: it looks like a “feature” that can be abused in many ways; one that has outlived its original threat model. Defenders have to treat them as ongoing risks, rather than one‑off CVEs.

---

---