Leonid Rozenberg on the Malware Quietly Stealing Your Logins

In 2024, a single click on a pirated copy of Photoshop can hand over every password you have ever saved in your browser—in plain text, with no encryption to slow the thief down. That is the blunt reality of info-stealing malware, and Leonid Rosenberg, a former Israeli intelligence officer now with the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock, joined Cyber Crime Junkies to explain exactly how it works, why it bypasses many common defenses, and what individuals and businesses can do about it.

What an Info Stealer Actually Does

Info stealers are a specific breed of malicious software designed to infiltrate a victim's computer, extract sensitive data, and then delete themselves. Unlike ransomware or worms, they do not spread across a network or try to infect other machines. They target one computer, steal what is there, and vanish. The critical difference between an info stealer infection and a typical data breach is the format of the stolen credentials. In a standard third-party breach—the kind tracked by services like Have I Been Pwned—passwords are often hashed or encrypted, requiring additional effort from attackers to crack. Info stealers, by contrast, extract passwords in clear text. The malware knows how to decrypt the local files where browsers store saved credentials, so even a 150-character, unique password generated by a password manager is stolen exactly as the user typed