Security News
Clipboard-injector malware disguised as Tor browser installers has been used to steal about $400,000 in cryptocurrency from nearly 16,000 users worldwide so far in 2023, according to Kaspersky researchers. "The Tor Project called to help keep Russian users connected to Tor to circumvent censorship," Vitaly Kamluk, head of Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team for APAC, wrote in a blog about the clipper malware.
Trojanized installers for the TOR anonymity browser are being used to target users in Russia and Eastern Europe with clipper malware designed to siphon cryptocurrencies since September 2022. "Clipboard injectors can be silent for years, show no network activity or any other signs of presence until the disastrous day when they replace a crypto wallet address," Vitaly Kamluk, director of global research and analysis team for APAC at Kaspersky, said.
A surge of trojanized Tor Browser installers targets Russians and Eastern Europeans with clipboard-hijacking malware that steals infected users' cryptocurrency transactions. While these malicious Tor installers target countries worldwide, Kaspersky says that most are targeting Russia and Eastern Europe.
Google has stepped in to remove a bogus Chrome browser extension from the official Web Store that masqueraded as OpenAI's ChatGPT service to harvest Facebook session cookies and hijack the accounts. The "ChatGPT For Google" extension, a trojanized version of a legitimate open source browser add-on, attracted over 9,000 installations since March 14, 2023, prior to its removal.
Morphisec, a security solution provider based in Israel, has reported that an advanced information stealer malware dubbed SYS01 is aimed at stealing access to Facebook business accounts and Chromium-based browsers' credentials. Morphisec's researcher has also seen the SYS01 malware attack critical government infrastructure employees, manufacturing companies and other industries.
The report also details the top browser security threats of 2022, which include phishing attacks via high reputation domains, malware distribution via file sharing systems, data leakage exploiting personal browser profiles, outdated browsers, compromised passwords, vulnerable unmanaged devices, high-risk extensions, shadow IT, and account takeovers with phishing credentials. In addition to the stats and analysis of the prominent threats, the report provides a retrospect of the main news stories that left a mark in the world of browser security in 2022.
The next major version of the privacy-focused Brave browser will start blocking annoyances like "Open in app" prompts and will feature better protections against pool-party attacks. Brave will now block this annoyance starting version 1.49 for Windows and Android, allowing users to browse the web without unexpected interruptions.
Microsoft announced on Tuesday a new version of its Bing search engine powered by a next-generation OpenAI language model more powerful than ChatGPT and specially trained for web search. "Today, we're launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web."
More and more security teams are now turning to the emerging category of purpose-built Browser Security Platform as the answer to the browser's security challenges. As this security solution category is still relatively new, there is not yet an established set of browser security best practices, nor common evaluation criteria.
Brave Browser version 1.47 was released yesterday, adding the Snowflake extension in the software's settings, enabling users to turn their devices into proxies that help users in censored countries connect to Tor. Brave had already added support for Tor Bridges in Private Windows with Tor in version 1.44, released in September 2022, helping users bypass restrictions in the countries using the company's own resources.