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Hoje — 9 de Novembro de 2026Cyber Threat Intel
  • ✇Malwarebytes
  • A week in security (November 2 – November 8)
    Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Big Tech sues over California plan to limit kids’ scrolling Attacks on supermarket and blood storage systems prompt US warning Phone return scams: where a real delivery and a fake return end up in a bill for you NIKKE PC launcher compromise put players’ passwords and personal files at risk Scammers use AI-generated images of missing pets to extort owners Vizio, Samsung smart TVs seem to ignore tracking opt outs The fake $750 Apple Cash reward
     
Antes de ontemCyber Threat Intel

Medical services company settles with 4 states over 2023 hack of sensitive patient records

6 de Novembro de 2026, 16:06
The case, brought by AGs in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Michigan, targeted the medical transcription, coding and imaging subsidiaries of the Nevada-based Perry Johnson Companies.

Certificate authority DigiCert reports data breach involving business customer info

6 de Novembro de 2026, 15:56
DigiCert explained that over the summer, an internal business system was "externally accessible when that was not intended," and someone had created an unauthorized account.

FBI agent pleads guilty to stealing $2.4 million in crypto from nation-state hackers

6 de Novembro de 2026, 13:53
Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, is facing up to 20 years in prison on wire fraud and money laundering charges after admitting to using his position on an FBI investigative squad to steal more than $2.4 million in cryptocurrency to cover his debts.

  • ✇Malwarebytes
  • Big Tech sues over California plan to limit kids’ scrolling
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Big Tech sues over California plan to limit kids’ scrolling

6 de Novembro de 2026, 12:06
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In this article

  • California wants to switch off autoplay and personalized feeds for under-16s.
  • Google, Meta, and TikTok are suing to stop the restrictions.
  • Age checks could raise privacy concerns for adults, too.

Google, Meta, and TikTok filed separate federal lawsuits on November 4, challenging Assembly Bill 1709, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed in September.

The companies argue that the law, due to take effect in 2027, interferes with free speech, overrides parents’ decisions, and conflicts with federal protections for online platforms.

AB 1709 prohibits covered platforms from providing California users under 16 certain

“psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably lead to compulsive use.”

The law specifically includes personalized “addictive feeds” and autoplay. It also allows the attorney general to define additional features through regulations.

It would not ban children from using the platforms. They can keep their accounts if the platform removes the restricted features. Otherwise, the platform must delete the account and associated personal information.

The law also requires age verification before providing the restricted features. The law doesn’t stop children from searching for videos, following creators, or communicating privately. It makes exceptions for certain search-based results, content that a user explicitly requests, and direct private messages, subject to conditions.

California’s argument is that harm is not limited to what children see. It can also arise from how a service encourages them to keep using it, through personalized recommendations and features such as autoplay.

The idea behind the law is straightforward: Instead of relying entirely on teenagers to recognize when to stop, require platforms to remove some of the mechanisms designed to keep them engaged.

The companies’ objections

The companies’ objections fall into several related categories.

Meta argues that deciding which posts to show, and how to arrange them, is protected editorial judgment under the First Amendment. Its complaint accuses California of attempting to appoint itself the

“editor, curator, and controller of online speech.”

TikTok makes a similar argument about its For You feed. It says selecting and arranging videos creates a curated product protected by free-speech rights, not merely a mechanism that the state can redesign at will.

Google likewise argues that YouTube’s recommendations help users find relevant, appropriate material among its vast collection of videos. It also defends autoplay as useful for watching content intended to be viewed in sequence.

The central disagreement is whether these are harmful product features that California can regulate, or editorial decisions protected by free-speech rights. California describes them as potentially harmful product design; the companies describe them as protected decisions about publishing speech.

The companies also raise parental control. Google says parents are best placed to decide what is appropriate for their families. TikTok points to its existing teen-account safeguards and Family Pairing controls, arguing that the law restricts free expression while taking decisions away from parents. Meta adds that personalized features can help deliver age-appropriate experiences.

The business model

There is also a commercial interest at stake: engagement. How often people return, how long they stay, and how much they interact all matter to the platforms’ businesses.

Meta’s annual report says it generates substantially all its revenue from advertising. It also says that changes to its content displays and product features can affect time spent, user engagement, and financial results. That doesn’t establish why the companies sued, but it helps explain why restrictions on recommendations and autoplay could have financial consequences.

If removing these features leads people to spend less time on a service, it could mean fewer opportunities to show ads. Compliance would also require product and operational changes, such as checking users’ ages and providing a different experience to those under 16.

Youth is the future. Big Tech is very much aware of this. Meta’s annual report identifies youth as an investment priority and describes attracting and retaining users as a competitive objective. Restrictions affecting how young people join and use a platform could affect its longer-term audience strategy, too.

What the future will bring

California is challenging an important part of the attention-based business model. Meta’s annual report warns investors that regulation affecting how it displays content or serves younger users could affect user growth, engagement, and financial results.

And then there’s the matter of age verification. The required age checks could affect adults as well as children: a service must verify users’ ages before providing the restricted features. Depending on how the checks work, this could involve sharing age-related information, raising privacy concerns and creating another opportunity for sensitive data to be exposed in a breach.

If it were up to me, platforms would stop designing for compulsive use, whatever the user’s age. Adults deserve a healthier online experience too. Applying those protections to everyone would also remove the need to check someone’s age before deciding whether they can use these features. Platforms might lose some advertising opportunities, but time spent online should not be the only measure of a successful service.


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.

  • ✇Cybersecurity Blog | SentinelOne
  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Cybersecurity - Week 45 (2026) SentinelOne
    The Good | Global Authorities Dismantle Investment Scams & VasyGrek Infrastructure, Indict University System HackersLaw enforcement in Europe, supported by Europol and Eurojust, arrested seven suspects and seized over 100 servers targeting a crime-as-a-service (CaaS) investment fraud infrastructure. Operating from Cyprus and Israel, an unnamed vendor supplied fraudulent trading websites to criminal call centers across Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and more. Following a four-year investig
     

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Cybersecurity - Week 45 (2026)

6 de Novembro de 2026, 15:30

The Good | Global Authorities Dismantle Investment Scams & VasyGrek Infrastructure, Indict University System Hackers

Law enforcement in Europe, supported by Europol and Eurojust, arrested seven suspects and seized over 100 servers targeting a crime-as-a-service (CaaS) investment fraud infrastructure. Operating from Cyprus and Israel, an unnamed vendor supplied fraudulent trading websites to criminal call centers across Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and more. 

Following a four-year investigation initiated after victims reported missing funds, investigators linked the infrastructure to fake foreign currency, stock, and cryptocurrency schemes affecting victims in at least 50 countries. Scammers used fake online account profits to coerce larger transfers before cutting contact, leaving victims unable to recover their funds.

In the U.S., a federal grand jury indicted two Canadian nationals, Ryan James Roach and Mathiew James Stubbings, for conspiring to breach multiple American universities to mine for cryptocurrency. Between June 2016 and December 2019, the co-conspirators deployed virtual private servers to infect academic networks across Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee with malware. 

Once inside, the defendants stole user log-ins and data, deployed cryptocurrency mining software, and hijacked high-performance campus supercomputers to conduct unauthorized network vulnerability research. Both men face up to ten years in prison and $250,000 fines following formal extradition proceedings from Canada.

Russian law enforcement authorities arrested three suspected members of the VasyGrek threat group (aka Fluffy Wolf) and dismantled its operational infrastructure. Active since 2016, the financially-motivated group was known for targeting organizations across metallurgy, energy, healthcare, and finance sectors in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. 

Attackers would send phishing emails with malicious accounting attachments to drop remote access trojans and steal corporate funds. Police seized computer equipment and server assets after uncovering a broad network of fake financial domains, dark web remote administration tools, and Golang backdoors used to execute unauthorized commands.

The Bad | Impersonators Abuse Microsoft Teams and Active Directory Certificate Services

According to a new report, threat actors have been posing as IT help desk staff on Microsoft Teams to message and call corporate employees and leverage external support-themed tenants to trick users into handing over workstation access. 

Once connected, attackers instructed victims to launch Quick Assist, a built-in Windows remote-help tool, and read back connection codes to grant full remote desktop control. The intruders then dropped malicious software archives into Downloads folders, unpacking and executing payloads via portable Python, Bun, or Java runtimes disguised as legitimate Windows system updates.

After establishing initial persistence, the attackers abused weak configuration templates within Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) to request digital authentication certificates for privileged domain accounts. In one documented intrusion, threat actors exploited an ESC1 misconfiguration to obtain certificates for three highly privileged identities—access that persisted even after password resets or workstation wipes. The attacker used one of those certificates to compromise a domain controller, execute DCSync credential dumping, and exfiltrate internal corporate files to an external server via Rclone.

In a second intrusion, attackers targeted an ESC8 configuration by deploying the ‘PetitPotam’ technique to force a domain controller to authenticate against an attacker-controlled endpoint. The relayed NTLM authentication allowed the actors to request a certificate directly for the domain controller without credentials, securing a persistent Kerberos ticket-granting ticket. The customer isolated the affected workstation, and no further attack progression was observed.

Because these intrusions exploit misconfigured certificate enrollment policies rather than underlying software vulnerabilities, Microsoft advises organizations to confirm unexpected support requests via internal channels, enforce Extended Protection for Authentication on web enrollment endpoints, and audit certificate issuance rules.

The Ugly | Threat Actors Disrupt European Refrigeration Systems Across Retail and Healthcare Sectors

Threat actors have targeted internet-exposed refrigeration control systems across Europe this week, altering temperature settings and activating defrost cycles across facilities just three weeks after similar attacks on hundreds of refrigeration systems in French supermarkets.

So far, this second wave has impacted retail chains across Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In several stores, attackers set cooling units to generate heat or raised temperature setpoints to 50°C. 

The activity extended into critical healthcare infrastructure when a cyberattack on refrigeration supplier Coolworld Rentals raised temperature thresholds at French Blood Establishment (EFS) cold-storage facilities managing vital blood supplies. However, automated monitoring alarms enabled staff to relocate stored blood products before any inventory was lost.

SentinelLABS’s breakdown notes that similar attacks targeted Israeli and Russian facilities in 2022, a Los Angeles meat processor in 2024, and U.S. military commissaries in August 2026. The intrusions primarily targeted commercial supervisory platforms, such as Danfoss AK-SM, AK-SC, and Copeland Dixell XWEB controllers, that centralize site cooling operations. 

Refrigeration_Attacks_Chronology.jpeg

At the time, ANSSI indicated that adversaries gained control by exploiting publicly accessible administration interfaces and weak default credentials rather than executing novel software zero-days.

While Russian-aligned hacktivist collectives including CARR, NoName057(16), and Z-Pentest claimed responsibility for specific disruptions, law enforcement authorities have not formally confirmed attribution. Opportunistic scanning against unhardened building management systems allows multiple threat groups to execute similar disruptions. 

To mitigate ongoing operational risks, government advisories from CERT-FR instruct operators to immediately disconnect exposed control panels from the public internet, restrict remote maintenance access to secure virtual private networks, enforce strong authentication controls, and replace legacy end-of-life hardware.

Watch the GBU Highlights

GBU_video_week45_2026.MP4

Social media giants sue California to overturn law shielding kids 15 and under from compulsive use

5 de Novembro de 2026, 17:48
Google, Meta and TikTok each filed suit in federal court against an incoming California law that blocks platforms from deploying features considered “psychologically exploitative.”

  • ✇Malwarebytes
  • Attacks on supermarket and blood storage systems prompt US warning
    Attackers don’t have to steal information to cause serious harm. Sometimes, changing a temperature setting is enough.On November 5, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and three other federal agencies issued a warning urging operators to secure industrial refrigeration and cold-chain monitoring systems.The warning follows cyberattacks on supermarket refrigeration systems across Europe. Separately, France’s national blood service
     

Attacks on supermarket and blood storage systems prompt US warning

6 de Novembro de 2026, 09:02

Attackers don’t have to steal information to cause serious harm. Sometimes, changing a temperature setting is enough.

On November 5, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and three other federal agencies issued a warning urging operators to secure industrial refrigeration and cold-chain monitoring systems.

The warning follows cyberattacks on supermarket refrigeration systems across Europe. Separately, France’s national blood service confirmed that the monitoring and control systems at three of its cold-storage sites had been affected. Staff intervened before any blood products or samples were compromised. The incident showed how a connected cooling system can put essential supplies at risk.

On October 13, after the first attacks in France, refrigeration supplier Danfoss advised its Dutch customers to disconnect their systems from the public internet and reconnect only through a secure network.

A Danfoss spokesperson told NOS that most stores followed the advice. When similar attacks reached the Netherlands on November 2, major supermarket chains were reportedly unaffected. At least 17 businesses, mainly butcher shops and small neighborhood stores, had their refrigeration systems compromised.

Danfoss said that the affected systems were still accessible through unsecured connections and used default passwords. The spokesperson said the attacks could have been prevented if the recommended precautions had been taken.

CISA and its partners warned that attackers may exploit authentication bypass flaws, code-injection vulnerabilities, or weak configurations in refrigeration controllers. Successful attacks could let them change temperatures or force equipment into continuous heating or defrost cycles.

The agencies recommend reducing that risk by keeping control panels off the public internet, isolating operational equipment from business networks, changing default passwords, using strong authentication, patching firmware, and replacing unsupported devices. They also recommend setting safe operating limits and alerts for temperature changes outside those limits.

What about home appliances?

You don’t need an industrial refrigeration unit to adopt some of these precautions.

  • Check whether you need remote access. If you never use a device while away from home, disable that feature. Check the manufacturer’s instructions first; disabling remote access may also affect alerts or smart-home integrations.
  • Check who can access the appliance, including suppliers, and how that access is protected.
  • Change default passwords and secure the associated account. Use a strong password and enable two-step verification wherever the appliance or app supports it. Protecting the app account matters as well as protecting the appliance itself.
  • Keep firmware and apps updated. Turn on automatic updates where available, and don’t ignore manual update prompts.

CNET Editors' Choice Award 2026

“One of the best cybersecurity suites on the planet.” 

According to CNET. Read their review →


  • ✇Malwarebytes
  • NIKKE PC launcher compromise put players’ passwords and personal files at risk
    Players of Goddess of Victory: NIKKE are being urged to check their PCs after attackers tampered with files used by the game’s Windows launcher. Opening the launcher could allow malicious software to run, potentially exposing much more than a player’s game account.The incident occurred as part of a supply-chain attack, where services or software used by the company in question is compromised. In practice, this meant that instead of persuading players to download a fake game or install a suspicio
     

NIKKE PC launcher compromise put players’ passwords and personal files at risk

5 de Novembro de 2026, 19:06

Players of Goddess of Victory: NIKKE are being urged to check their PCs after attackers tampered with files used by the game’s Windows launcher. Opening the launcher could allow malicious software to run, potentially exposing much more than a player’s game account.

The incident occurred as part of a supply-chain attack, where services or software used by the company in question is compromised. In practice, this meant that instead of persuading players to download a fake game or install a suspicious add-on, the attackers compromised resources used by the legitimate launcher. Players could therefore encounter the threat simply by opening software they already trusted.

Game publisher Level Infinite has released fixes and added a malware-checking feature to the official PC client. However, fixing the delivery mechanism does not undo an infection, nor does it recover passwords and other information that may have been stolen.


Breaches happen every day. Don’t be the last to know.


Independent researcher MotherSphere identified malicious code in four JavaScript files hosted on Level Infinite’s official content delivery network (CDN).

Players should be aware of a discrepancy in the published timelines. Level Infinite says malicious-program distribution began on October 30, while MotherSphere reports evidence of the remote-control agent running as early as October 23.

According to the researcher’s analysis, the distributed remote-control agent supported commands to:

  • Run programs and system commands.
  • Browse folders and download files.
  • Take screenshots.
  • Retrieve saved NIKKE login credentials.
  • Collect browser passwords and cookies.
  • Search for developer credentials, API tokens, and other secrets.
  • Collect cryptocurrency wallet-extension data.

The number of compromised PCs and the full extent of any data theft remain unclear.

How to stay safe

Mobile-only players are not affected, according to Level Infinite, so they do not need to take any additional security measures.

Level Infinite says it replaced three abnormal script files early on November 4, then refreshed the CDN’s cache for the remaining file later that day. MotherSphere subsequently reported that all four files were clean on the four CDN servers checked.

If you opened the Windows launcher during the period identified above, take the following steps.

  • Close the launcher and check your PC. MotherSphere’s report includes user-reported Malwarebytes detections for traces associated with the attack.
  • Follow the removal instructions published by NIKKE carefully.
  • Secure your accounts from a clean device. Do not change passwords on a computer that may still be compromised.
  • If a cryptocurrency wallet or its recovery phrase may have been exposed, use a clean device to move funds to a newly created wallet with a new recovery phrase.
  • Level Infinite asks players who believe they were affected, including those experiencing problems with external accounts or financial losses, to contact its customer support team, so keep relevant records without handing over personal information.

Please note that the NIKKE wiki’s unofficial cleanup guidance recommends scanning with Malwarebytes. Although the guide describes this as a one-time free option, Malwarebytes Free lets you continue running manual scans and removing detected malware after the Premium trial ends. The trial provides additional features, including real-time protection, so decide what is best for you.


From reporting threats to removing them.

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

Chainalysis warns all users hit in cyber breach involving ‘agentic’ techniques

4 de Novembro de 2026, 21:00
Chainalysis, the blockchain analytics company, said Wednesday night that some information belonging to all its users — which its website says include those in the law enforcement and national security sectors — had been exposed in a cyberattack.

Ukraine fires two senior security officials amid corruption probe into scam call centers

4 de Novembro de 2026, 21:00
Ukraine's security service has fired two senior officials amid a corruption investigation into an alleged criminal network that bribed law enforcement officers to protect fraudulent call centers and other illegal operations.

More Asian airlines announce data breaches after attack on Spanish IT provider Amadeus

4 de Novembro de 2026, 18:30
Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines have all come forward over the last week to report data breaches traced back to Amadeus IT Group — a company that builds and maintains platforms for flight reservation, ticketing and check-in platforms.

  • ✇Malwarebytes
  • Vizio, Samsung smart TVs seem to ignore tracking opt outs
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Vizio, Samsung smart TVs seem to ignore tracking opt outs

5 de Novembro de 2026, 09:10
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In this article

  • Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) sends viewing data from your smart TV to third parties.
  • Vizio and Samsung TVs both appeared to send this data even when researchers opted out of ACR.
  • Only four out of eight smart TVs appeared to completely honor ACR opt-out.

If you thought that opting out of surveillance on your smart TV would give you your privacy back, think again.

A study by researchers at Northeastern University found that some smart TVs still seem to send information about what you’re watching to third parties, even after you pressed the opt-out button.

The study, ‘Watching the watchers‘, tested twelve smart TVs from ten manufacturers to find out how well they respected opt-outs from automatic content recognition (ACR). ACR is a TV feature that captures audio and/or video content from smart TVs and uploads it to a third party (typically the TV manufacturer).

The third party converts this content into digital fingerprints to understand what you’re watching, and can then use it to send targeted advertising or allow others to do the same. It’s on most if not all smart TVs, and 82% of US households had a smart TV as of last year.

The test took in the eight operating systems behind roughly 95% of US smart TVs, and ran ten viewing scenarios on each of them. These ranged from viewing antenna TV through to viewing via screen mirroring from another device. The researchers tested viewing the first-party streaming services provided free with the manufacturers’ operating systems, along with sessions using third-party streaming apps. And they tested sessions where the TV was connected to another device via its HDMI port.

The study ran all of its tests both with ACR left on, and with the opt-out setting selected. The whole test involved over 5,000 automated sessions.

Vizio continued to send 100% of what looked like traffic when viewing its first-party streaming services and antenna-based TV services, even after people had opted out, the study said. It also sent the same amount of traffic when idle. However it didn’t send any ACR traffic for third-party streaming data, according to the report.

Samsung did appear to leak some traffic from third-party streaming services after the researchers opted out of its ACR function. They tested 30 runs of Samsung’s built-in streaming service after opting out of ACR, and found that it still showed traffic “consistent with ACR”.

After opt-out, the Samsung TV’s Tizen OS seemed to send ACR-related traffic about Netflix in 7% of runs, YouTube in 10% of runs, and Tubi TV in 20%. It sent ACR 60% of the time from HDMI sessions. Like the Vizio TV, it also sent ACR traffic for all of its first-party streaming sessions.

Late last month, a researcher reverse-engineered a Samsung Smart TV and cast doubt on whether disabling ACR worked on the device.

There was good news, though. Four smart TV operating systems went completely silent after the researchers turned off ACR: LG’s WebOS, Sony’s Google TV OS, Amazon’s FireTV OS, and Supersonic’s VIDAA OS.

Encryption is a research challenge

Vizio agreed to pay $2.2 million in a 2017 FTC settlement over charges that it collected viewing histories on eleven million smart TVs without user consent. At the time, it agreed to allow people to opt out of ACR.

The Vizio TV that the researchers tested sent traffic to Kinesis, an Amazon-run data ingestion service that the manufacturer uses to analyze data from its smart TVs. The researchers noticed no dip in traffic to this domain when they opted out of ACR on a Vizio TV. They said:

“The opt-out setting has no observable effect on traffic sent to this endpoint. However, we cannot inspect the payload due to encryption so we cannot confirm whether this violates the FTC settlement.”

That’s a challenge to this research because most smart TVs encrypt their ACR traffic, including Samsung. So the researchers had to infer that this was ACR traffic based on signals such as where it was being sent, along with timing, volume, and protocol details.

One exception was Supersonic’s VIDAA OS, which sent ACR data to servers unencrypted. The servers responded unencrypted with a genre for what they recognized. Anyone watching the network could see it all, they warned. And because the servers didn’t require a login at the time of the test, over 57 million ACR detection results from other people’s TVs were accessible.

Vizio’s first-party streaming service WatchFree+ also dropped unencrypted titles of any show or channel being watched into online communications with the free TV service provider. There’s no way to turn that off, the researchers warned.

Walmart acquired Vizio for $2.3 billion in 2024, partly to help “advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery”.

The retailer also runs Walmart Connect, a retail media business that uses its customers’ data to help other businesses target them with ads.

Walmart was particularly interested in Vizio’s advertising business it, said at the time:

“Pairing it with Walmart Connect will be impactful and allow us to invest in our business even further on behalf of our customers.”

What smart TV owners can do

What can you do to protect yourself from a smart TV that might be sending your viewing data elsewhere? The researchers have some suggestions:

  • WebOS (LG), Fire TV OS, Google TV on Sony, and VIDAA OS on Supersonic all appeared to honor ACR opt-out, so selecting it on these TVs should be safe.
  • Disconnect the TV from the internet and use an external streaming device. That way the TV can’t send back data, even if it picks it up from the HDMI connection.
  • Use a blocklist. This takes a little more technical knowledge. If you run an internet router that can accept blocklists, then you can add a list of known ACR endpoints that will stop your TV’s traffic reaching them. The researchers provide one here.

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