Recently, a significant global outage resulted in thousands of Windows computers being brought offline. The source of the outage was linked to a faulty Crowdstrike security update.McAfee has observed opportunistic scammers exploiting the current outage, which has disrupted essential systems across industries including banking, airlines, emergency services, and more, as well as consumers trying to access their Windows devices. Given the global impact of this outage, consumers are urged to remain highly vigilant to protect their personal information and ensure their data remains secure. &n ..read more

When it comes to protecting your privacy, take a close look at your social media use—because sharing can quickly turn into oversharing. The term “oversharing” carries several different definitions. Yet in our case here, oversharing means saying more than one should to more people than they should. Consider the audience you have across your social media profiles. Perhaps you have dozens, if not hundreds of friends and followers. All with various degrees of closeness and familiarity. Who among them can you absolutely trust with the information you share? And you might be sharing more than you t ..read more

Yashvi Shah and Vignesh Dhatchanamoorthy McAfee Labs has discovered a highly unusual method of malware delivery, referred to by researchers as the “Clickfix” infection chain. The attack chain begins with users being lured to visit seemingly legitimate but compromised websites. Upon visiting, victims are redirected to domains hosting fake popup windows that instruct them to paste a script into a PowerShell terminal. The “ClickFix” infection chain represents a sophisticated form of social engineering, leveraging the appearance of authenticity to manipulate users into executing malicious scripts ..read more

In today’s interconnected world, our mobile devices serve as essential tools for communication, productivity, and entertainment. However, for some tech-savvy users, the allure of unlocking the full potential of their devices through jailbreaking (for iOS) or rooting (for Android) can be tempting. While these processes offer users greater control and customization over their devices, they also raise significant questions about security implications.  What is jailbreaking?  To “jailbreak” means to allow the phone’s owner to gain full access to the root of the operating system and acce ..read more

Authored by Lakshya Mathur and Abhishek Karnik As we gear up for the 2024 Paris Olympics, excitement is building, and so is the potential for scams. From fake ticket sales to counterfeit merchandise, scammers are on the prowl, leveraging big events to trick unsuspecting fans. Recently, McAfee researchers uncovered a particularly malicious scam that not only aims to deceive but also to portray the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as corrupt. This scam involves sophisticated social engineering techniques, where the scammers aim to deceive. They’ve become more accessible than ever thanks t ..read more

When it comes to passwords, most of us would love nothing more than to set it and forget it. But that’s exactly what hackers are hoping for — in fact, it makes their job a lot easier. This means the best line of defense is frequent password changes.    But how often should you create new passwords? Cybersecurity experts recommend changing your password every three months. There may even be situations where you should change your password immediately, especially if a cybercriminal has access to your account.    This article explores those exact situations and covers some of the best ..read more

This Fourth of July brought fireworks in the form of a digital security breach, one that has been recorded as the most significant password leak in history. Dubbed RockYou2024, this colossal data dump was unveiled by a user named “ObamaCare” on a prominent hacking forum, revealing a staggering 9.9 billion unique passwords in plain text. The Scale of RockYou2024 The sheer volume of compromised passwords is enough to make any security enthusiast’s head spin. RockYou2024 isn’t just a leak; it’s a behemoth collection of 9,948,575,739 passwords that could potentially affect millions of users world ..read more

With a record-breaking number of Americans set to travel over the July 4th holiday, most of them by car, scammers have adjusted their plans accordingly. New research reveals the top 10 U.S. destinations where scammers plant the bulk of their online travel scams. Our McAfee Labs team kicked off this research by analyzing TripAdvisor’s Popular Domestic Destinations for US Travelers and Fastest Growing Domestic Destinations for US Travelers lists. From there, they identified the locales that generated the highest volume of risky search results. For people researching and booking travel online, t ..read more

It’s been almost two years since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, driving increased mainstream awareness of and access to Generative AI tools. In that time, new tools and solutions seem to be launching daily. There is also a growing trend of building bigger models that consume larger quantities of training data, often with mixed results ranging from hallucinations or categorically incorrect facts to the regurgitation of opinions as universal truth, proving the old adage that sometimes “less is more”.  Quality over Quantity  So, if using more data doesn’t translate into better results… what ..read more

What is our real job as parents? Is it to ensure our kids get good grades? – Maybe. Or is it ensuring we can give them the latest and greatest clothing and devices? Mmmm, not really. When all is said and done, I believe our real job is to keep our kids safe, teach them to be independent, and set them up for success – both online and offline. As first-generation digital parents, many of us are learning on the job. While we can still glean advice from our own parents on dealing with our teenager’s hormones and driving challenges, there’s no intergenerational wisdom for anything digital. So, it ..read more