Information about 0-days exploited in-the-wild!

While Windows holds the largest market share on malware, macOS has its fair share of threats that mostly exist in an adware/grayware area. In this post I want to walk through how a Pirrit PKG file installer works. There are lots of more complex threats, but this is a good place to start if you’re just jumping into analysis. If you want to follow along at home, I’m working with this file in MalwareBazaar: https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/d39426dbceb54bba51587242f8101184df43cc23af7dc7b364ca2327e28e7825/.

Researcher shares how he unearthed newer bugs in Apple's operating system by closer scrutiny of previous research, including vulnerabilities that came out of the Pwn2Own competition.

Researchers looking into a new APT group targeting gambling sites with a variety of cross-platform malware recently identified a version of oRAT malware targeting macOS users and written in Go. While neither RATs nor Go malware are uncommon on any platform, including the Mac, the development of such a tool by a previously unknown APT is an interesting turn, signifying the increasing need for threat actors to address the rising occurrence of Macs among their intended targets and victims. In this post, we dig deeper into the technical details of this novel RAT to understand better how it works and how security teams can detect it in their environments.

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While Mac enterprise networks are not as common as Windows, and subject to less targeting by adversaries, recent CrowdStrike Falcon Overwatch observations shed light on sophisticated tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) targeting Mac environments.

What does APT Activity Look Like on macOS?I often get asked what Advanced Persistent Activity (APT) or nation state hacking looks like on a macOS system. This is a great question and the answer is no

The identified vulnerability allows bypassing of Gatekeeper security and app notorization, has been patched by Apple.

As use of Apple devices has grown in the enterprise, the company has increasingly become a target for malware threats and other attacks. ISMG spoke with experts and

We discovered a now-patched vulnerability in macOS SUHelper, designated as CVE-2022-22639. If exploited, the vulnerability could allow malicious actors to gain root privilege escalation.

Apple has just released fixes for two actively exploited vulnerabilities affecting macOS Monterey, iOS 15, and iPadOS 15.

In late 2021, Volexity discovered an intrusion in an environment monitored as part of its Network Security Monitoring service. Volexity detected a system running frp, otherwise known as fast reverse proxy, and subsequently detected internal port scanning shortly afterward. This traffic was determined to be unauthorized and the system, a MacBook Pro running macOS 11.6 (Big Sur), was isolated for further forensic analysis. Volexity was able to run Surge Collect to acquire system memory (RAM) and select files of interest from the machine for analysis. This led to the discovery of a macOS variant of a malware implant Volexity calls GIMMICK. Volexity has encountered Windows versions of the malware family on several previous occasions. GIMMICK is used in targeted attacks by Storm Cloud, a Chinese espionage threat actor known to attack organizations across Asia. It is a feature-rich, multi-platform malware family that uses public cloud hosting services (such as Google […]

Analyzing OSX.DazzleSpy A fully-featured cyber-espionage macOS implant

To protect our users, TAG routinely hunts for 0-day vulnerabilities exploited in-the-wild. In late August 2021, TAG discovered watering hole attacks targeting visitors to Hong Kong websites for a media outlet and a prominent pro-democracy labor and political group. The watering hole served an XNU privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2021-30869) unpatched in macOS Catalina, which led to the installation of a previously unreported backdoor.

The website of a Hong Kong pro-democracy radio station was compromised to serve a Safari exploit that installed cyberespionage malware on visitors’ Macs.

In December 2021, we discovered a new multi-platform backdoor that targets Windows, Mac, and Linux that we have named SysJoker.

Earlier today (January 11th), Researchers at Intezer published an report titled, “New SysJoker Backdoor Targets Windows, Linux, and macOS.” In this report, they detailed a new cross-platform backdoor they named SysJoker. Though initially discovered on Linux, the Intezer researchers shortly thereafter also found both Windows and Mac versions: *"SysJoker was first discovered during an active attack on a Linux-based web server of a leading educational institution. After further investigation, we found that SysJoker also has Mach-O and Windows PE versions." -Intezer*

I'm running MacOS Monterey. Several times in the last few weeks, I've noticed the orange dot indicating the microphone is being used by an app, and I click on the Control Center and see that Zoom is accessing the microphone. I'm not in a meeting and simply have the Zoom app open. Why would Zoom be accessing the microphone when I'm not in a meeting?

We’re happy to announce the public release of esmat, a new free & open-source tool. esmat is a command-line app for macOS that allows you to explore the behavior of Apple’s Endpoint Security framework.

"This document describes the security content of macOS Monterey 12.2.1."

"Apple on Thursday released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari to address a new WebKit flaw that it said may have been actively exploited in the wild, making it the company's third zero-day patch since the start of the year."

New domains and new behavioral indicators, but malware authors stick to tried and tested architecture despite Apple’s updates.

Jamf Threat Labs updates Jamf Protect to completely prevent CloudMensis from threatening the security of your macOS fleet.

North Korean hackers from the Lazarus group have been using a signed malicious executable for macOS to impersonate Coinbase and lure in employees in the financial technology sector.

Zoom has issued a patch for a bug on macOS that could allow a hacker to take control of a user’s operating system (via MacRumors). In an update on its security bulletin, Zoom acknowledges the issue (CVE-2022-28756) and says a fix is included in version 5.11.5 of the app on Mac, which you can (and should) download now.

In macOS 12.0.1 Monterey, Apple fixed CVE-2021-30873. This was a process injection vulnerability affecting (essentially) all macOS AppKit-based applications. We reported this vulnerability to Apple, along with methods to use this vulnerability to escape the sandbox, elevate privileges to root and bypass the filesystem restrictions of SIP.

With a recent market cap of over $100 billion and the genericization of its name, the popularity of Zoom is undeniable. But what about its security? This imperative question is often quite personal, as who amongst us isn't jumping on weekly (daily?) Zoom calls? In this talk, we’ll explore Zoom’s macOS application to uncover several critical security flaws. Flaws, that provided a local unprivileged attacker a direct and reliable path to root. The first flaw, presents itself subtly in a core cryptographic validation routine, while the second is due to a nuanced trust issue between Zoom’s client and its privileged helper component. After detailing both root cause analysis and full exploitation of these flaws, we’ll end the talk by showing how such issues could be avoided …both by Zoom, but also in other macOS applications.

If you’re still running macOS Mojave or earlier, now is the time to take action to ensure your Mac maintains protection against malware.

This investigation report contains an applications analysis of 7 different Apple developer accounts (identified so far — maybe there are…

ESET uncovers CloudMensis, a macOS backdoor that spies on users of Mac devices and communicates with its operators via public cloud storage services.