Beware: Fake Facebook Job Ads Spreading 'Ov3r_Stealer' to Steal Crypto and Credentials

Threat actors are leveraging bogus Facebook job advertisements as a lure to trick prospective targets into installing a new Windows-based stealer malware codenamed Ov3r_Stealer. "This malware is designed to steal credentials and crypto wallets and send those to a Telegram channel that the threat actor monitors," Trustwave SpiderLabs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Ov3r_Stealer

Vietnamese Hackers Using New Delphi-Powered Malware to Target Indian Marketers

The Vietnamese threat actors behind the Ducktail stealer malware have been linked to a new campaign that ran between March and early October 2023, targeting marketing professionals in India with an aim to hijack Facebook business accounts. "An important feature that sets it apart is that, unlike previous campaigns, which relied on .NET applications, this one used Delphi as the programming

NodeStealer Malware Hijacking Facebook Business Accounts for Malicious Ads

Compromised Facebook business accounts are being used to run bogus ads that employ "revealing photos of young women" as lures to trick victims into downloading an updated version of a malware called NodeStealer. "Clicking on ads immediately downloads an archive containing a malicious .exe 'Photo Album' file which also drops a second executable written in .NET – this payload is in charge of

Meta Launches Paid Ad-Free Subscription in Europe to Satisfy Privacy Laws

Meta on Monday announced plans to offer an ad-free option to access Facebook and Instagram for users in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland to comply with "evolving" data protection regulations in the region. The ad-free subscription, which costs €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android, is expected to be officially available starting next

NodeStealer Malware Now Targets Facebook Business Accounts on Multiple Browsers

An ongoing campaign is targeting Facebook Business accounts with bogus messages to harvest victims' credentials using a variant of the Python-based NodeStealer and potentially take over their accounts for follow-on malicious activities.  "The attacks are reaching victims mainly in Southern Europe and North America across different segments, led by the manufacturing services and technology

Vietnamese Hackers Deploy Python-Based Stealer via Facebook Messenger

A new phishing attack is leveraging Facebook Messenger to propagate messages with malicious attachments from a "swarm of fake and hijacked personal accounts" with the ultimate goal of taking over the targets' Business accounts. "Originating yet again from a Vietnamese-based group, this campaign uses a tiny compressed file attachment that packs a powerful Python-based stealer dropped in a

Meta Takes Down Thousands of Accounts Involved in Disinformation Ops from China and Russia

Meta has disclosed that it disrupted two of the largest known covert influence operations in the world from China and Russia, blocking thousands of accounts and pages across its platform. “It targeted more than 50 apps, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, LiveJournal, VKontakte, Vimeo, and dozens of smaller platforms and

Vietnamese Cybercriminals Targeting Facebook Business Accounts with Malvertising

Malicious actors associated with the Vietnamese cybercrime ecosystem are leveraging advertising-as-a-vector on social media platforms such as Meta-owned Facebook to distribute malware. “Threat actors have long used fraudulent ads as a vector to target victims with scams, malvertising, and more,” WithSecure researcher Mohammad Kazem Hassan Nejad said. “And with businesses now leveraging the reach

Meta Set to Enable Default End-to-End Encryption on Messenger by Year End

Meta has once again reaffirmed its plans to roll out support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year. As part of that effort, the social media giant said it's upgrading "millions more people's chats" effective August 22, 2023, exactly seven months after it started gradually expanding the feature to more users in

Phishers Exploit Salesforce's Email Services Zero-Day in Targeted Facebook Campaign

A sophisticated Facebook phishing campaign has been observed exploiting a zero-day flaw in Salesforce's email services, allowing threat actors to craft targeted phishing messages using the company's domain and infrastructure. "Those phishing campaigns cleverly evade conventional detection methods by chaining the Salesforce vulnerability and legacy quirks in Facebook's Web Games platform,"

Sophisticated BundleBot Malware Disguised as Google AI Chatbot and Utilities

A new malware strain known as BundleBot has been stealthily operating under the radar by taking advantage of .NET single-file deployment techniques, enabling threat actors to capture sensitive information from compromised hosts. "BundleBot is abusing the dotnet bundle (single-file), self-contained format that results in very low or no static detection at all," Check Point said in a report

E.U. Regulators Hit Meta with Record $1.3 Billion Fine for Data Transfer Violations

Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined a record $1.3 billion by European Union data protection regulators for transferring the personal data of users in the region to the U.S. In a binding decision taken by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), the social media giant has been ordered to bring its data transfers into compliance with the GDPR and delete unlawfully stored and processed

Meta Uncovers Massive Social Media Cyber Espionage Operations Across South Asia

Three different threat actors leveraged hundreds of elaborate fictitious personas on Facebook and Instagram to target individuals located in South Asia as part of disparate attacks. "Each of these APTs relied heavily on social engineering to trick people into clicking on malicious links, downloading malware or sharing personal information across the internet," Guy Rosen, chief information

Meta Takes Down Malware Campaign That Used ChatGPT as a Lure to Steal Accounts

Meta said it took steps to take down more than 1,000 malicious URLs from being shared across its services that were found to leverage OpenAI's ChatGPT as a lure to propagate about 10 malware families since March 2023. The development comes against the backdrop of fake ChatGPT web browser extensions being increasingly used to steal users' Facebook account credentials with an aim to run

Fake ChatGPT Chrome Extension Hijacking Facebook Accounts for Malicious Advertising

A fake ChatGPT-branded Chrome browser extension has been found to come with capabilities to hijack Facebook accounts and create rogue admin accounts, highlighting one of the different methods cyber criminals are using to distribute malware. "By hijacking high-profile Facebook business accounts, the threat actor creates an elite army of Facebook bots and a malicious paid media apparatus," Guardio

New S1deload Malware Hijacking Users' Social Media Accounts and Mining Cryptocurrency

An active malware campaign has set its sights on Facebook and YouTube users by leveraging a new information stealer to hijack the accounts and abuse the systems' resources to mine cryptocurrency. Bitdefender is calling the malware S1deload Stealer for its use of DLL side-loading techniques to get past security defenses and execute its malicious components. "Once infected, S1deload Stealer steals

Facebook Introduces New Features for End-to-End Encrypted Messenger App

Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it has started to expand global testing of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Messenger chats by default. "Over the next few months, more people will continue to see some of their chats gradually being upgraded with an extra layer of protection provided by end-to-end encryption," Meta's Melissa Miranda said. The social media behemoth said it intends to notify

Irish Regulators Fine Facebook $414 Million for Forcing Users to Accept Targeted Ads

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta Platforms €390 million (roughly $414 million) over its handling of user data for serving personalized ads in what could be a major blow to its ad-fueled business model. To that end, the privacy regulator has ordered Meta Ireland to pay two fines – a €210 million ($222.5 million) fine over violations of the E.U. General Data Protection

Facebook to Pay $725 Million to settle Lawsuit Over Cambridge Analytica Data Leak

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. The legal dispute sprang up in response to revelations that the social media giant allowed third-party apps such as those used by Cambridge Analytica to access users' personal information without their consent for political

Facebook Cracks Down on Spyware Vendors from U.S., China, Russia, Israel, and India

Meta Platforms disclosed that it took down no less than 200 covert influence operations since 2017 spanning roughly 70 countries across 42 languages. The social media conglomerate also took steps to disable accounts and block infrastructure operated by spyware vendors, including in China, Russia, Israel, the U.S. and India, that targeted individuals in about 200 countries. "The global

Irish Regulator Fines Facebook $277 Million for Leak of Half a Billion Users' Data

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has levied fines of €265 million ($277 million) against Meta Platforms for failing to safeguard the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service, ramping up privacy enforcement against U.S. tech firms. The fines follow an inquiry initiated by the European regulator on April 14, 2021, close on the heels of a leak of a "collated

Ducktail Malware Operation Evolves with New Malicious Capabilities

The operators of the Ducktail information stealer have demonstrated a "relentless willingness to persist" and continued to update their malware as part of an ongoing financially driven campaign. "The malware is designed to steal browser cookies and take advantage of authenticated Facebook sessions to steal information from the victim's Facebook account," WithSecure researcher Mohammad Kazem

Meta Takes Down Fake Facebook and Instagram Accounts Linked to Pro-U.S. Influence Operation

Meta Platforms on Tuesday said it took down a network of accounts and pages across Facebook and Instagram that were operated by people associated with the U.S. military to spread narratives that depicted the country in a favorable light in the Middle East and Central Asia. The network, which originated from the U.S., primarily singled out Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,

Meta Reportedly Fires Dozens of Employees for Hijacking Users' Facebook and Instagram Accounts

Meta Platforms is said to have fired or disciplined over two dozen employees and contractors over the past year for allegedly compromising and taking over user accounts, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Some of these cases involved bribery, the publication said, citing sources and documents. Included among those fired were contractors who worked as security guards at the social media

This Hidden Facebook Tool Lets Users Remove Their Email or Phone Number Shared by Others

Facebook appears to have silently rolled out a tool that allows users to remove their contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, uploaded by others. The existence of the tool, which is buried inside a Help Center page about "Friending," was first reported by Business Insider last week. It's offered as a way for "Non-users" to "exercise their rights under applicable laws." <!

New PHP Version of Ducktail Malware Hijacking Facebook Business Accounts

A PHP version of an information-stealing malware called Ducktail has been discovered in the wild being distributed in the form of cracked installers for legitimate apps and games, according to the latest findings from Zscaler. "Like older versions (.NetCore), the latest version (PHP) also aims to exfiltrate sensitive information related to saved browser credentials, Facebook account information,

Facebook Detects 400 Android and iOS Apps Stealing Users Log-in Credentials

Meta Platforms on Friday disclosed that it had identified over 400 malicious apps on Android and iOS that it said targeted online users with the goal of stealing their Facebook login information. "These apps were listed on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store and disguised as photo editors, games, VPN services, business apps, and other utilities to trick people into downloading them," the

Facebook Shuts Down Covert Political 'Influence Operations' from Russia and China

Meta Platforms on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to dismantle two covert influence operations originating from China and Russia for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) so as to manipulate public debate. While the Chinese operation sets its sights on the U.S. and the Czech Republic, the Russian network primarily targeted Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the U.K. with themes

Facebook Testing Default End-to-End Encryption and Encrypted Backups in Messenger

Social media company Meta said it will begin testing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on its Messenger platform this week for select users as the default option, as the company continues to slowly add security layers to its various chat services. "If you're in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won't have to opt in to the

Meta Cracks Down on Cyber Espionage Operations in South Asia Abusing Facebook

Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it took action against two espionage operations in South Asia that leveraged its social media platforms to distribute malware to potential targets. The first set of activities is what the company described as "persistent and well-resourced" and undertaken by a hacking group tracked under the moniker Bitter APT (aka APT-C-08 or T-APT-17) targeting

New Ducktail Infostealer Malware Targeting Facebook Business and Ad Accounts

Facebook business and advertising accounts are at the receiving end of an ongoing campaign dubbed Ducktail designed to seize control as part of a financially driven cybercriminal operation.  "The threat actor targets individuals and employees that may have access to a Facebook Business account with an information-stealer malware," Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure (formerly F-Secure