Practical advice on preventing malware infections across personal and organizational devices. Topics include antivirus best practices, safe browsing habits, email attachment handling, software patching, network segmentation, and layered defense strategies that stop malware before it executes.
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In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a social engineering attack opened the door to ransomware that crippled casino floors, hotel check-ins, and digital room keys for days. The attackers didn't use some exotic, never-before-seen weapon. They used well-known types of malware — the same categories
In 2023, the FBI dismantled a cybercriminal operation that used the Snake malware — a sophisticated keylogger that had quietly exfiltrated credentials from government networks across 50 countries for nearly two decades. Every password. Every internal message. Every classified document typed into a keyboard. That's the reality of a
In February 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the U.S. — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The attack disrupted claims processing for hospitals and pharmacies nationwide, exposed protected health information for an estimated 100 million people, and reportedly led to a $22
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 880,000 complaints with losses exceeding $12.5 billion — and a staggering number of those incidents started with a single file that looked perfectly legitimate. That file was trojan horse malware, disguised as an invoice, a software update,
In March 2024, security researchers at Fortinet uncovered a campaign distributing Snake Keylogger through phishing emails disguised as payment remittance notices. The malware silently captured credentials from over 280 banking and email applications before exfiltrating everything to attacker-controlled Telegram bots. The victims had no idea. Every password, every credit card
In 2022, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 800,000 complaints with losses exceeding $10.3 billion — and malware was the engine behind a staggering number of those incidents. I've spent years watching organizations get blindsided not because they lacked firewalls, but because
In September 2022, Uber disclosed a breach that started with a single employee accepting a multi-factor authentication push notification they shouldn't have. The threat actor behind it — linked to the Lapsus$ group — had already compromised the employee's credentials. But the initial foothold? Social engineering and malware
In March 2022, the FBI issued a Private Industry Notification warning that cybercriminals were using keyloggers embedded in fake business invoices to compromise corporate networks. The attackers harvested credentials for weeks before anyone noticed. By then, the damage was done — financial accounts drained, email systems hijacked, and sensitive client data
A Parking Lot Full of Malware In 2016, researchers at the University of Illinois dropped 297 USB drives across a campus. Nearly 48% were picked up and plugged into a computer. Some were plugged in within six minutes of being dropped. That study still haunts me because the fundamental behavior
Colonial Pipeline Was Just the Beginning In May 2021, a single compromised password shut down the largest fuel pipeline in the United States. Colonial Pipeline paid DarkSide operators $4.4 million in ransom. Fuel shortages rippled across the Southeast for days. That attack used just one of the many types
