Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M1 Macs Targeted by Additional Malware, Exact Threat Remains a Mystery
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is not attacking any vulnerability in Apple Silicon (or in Intel for that matter). The researchers don't know the exact delivery method but it is targeting all macs regardless of their processors and is pretty clearly a trojan. The researchers speculate that it gets in by users doing something dumb like installing something a shady website prompts them to do. The vulnerability here is in people not in computer architecture.
The only processor specific thing this malware does happens once it's actually installed and is in the system. At the moment all the Apple Silicon specific part does is install a placeholder "hello world" type app (the intel version runs a similar intel placeholder app).
All in all I don't really understand the hype about it. I am no expert but what is described of the malware is extremely primitive, easy to spot and delete by hand by a regular user. It's not exactly hidden in any clever way (in fact, not hidden at all). The launch agent it installs is a plain text file sitting in the same place where all user agents sit (~/library/launchagents). You can see exactly what it does simply by quicklooking it. same with the shell scripts it installs. and you can defang the whole thing by just trashing the launch agent and restarting. Again, I am no expert but that doesn't sound sophisticated at all. I mean, is there any Windows malware that basically just puts something on your desktop and which you can kill simply by trashing it?
Last edited:
Nearly 30,000 Macs reportedly infected with mysterious malware
Nearly 30,000 Macs worldwide have been infected with mysterious malware, according to researchers at security firm Red Canary.
Very likely. Intel has a new team in charge , so things will get a lot batter soon ,in my opinion.
In my opinion the question should be : Where are these Intel chips made ? In US or Ireland or Middle East ? Sorry Intel , but I would only use the Intel chips made in US or Ireland to avoid custom made wicked malware & backdoors . Let's hope the new team will correct the problems fast .What happened at Intel since at least 2016 is very sad , but $25 billion were invested & spended from 2016 to 2020 & is very little to show for .... Oh yes, backdoored & malware loaded chips , sorry !
It appears the new malware actually targets the Apple M1 and not the Intel Macs.
Works great, I've been running it for a month now. If you're trying any of the newer betas you might need to re-download after you've done your update though. It runs as an Intel process though, so it's not M1 ported currently.
Last edited:
You overgeneralized in your original comment. This is what the media does. Normally, I wouldn't bother giving a thumbs down for such a comment, even if you are wrong. But you're asking, so I'll answer with a question: Are you a media hack? I mean, hey...you overgeneralized like one, so it's a fair question.
Yes, I've heard it said that 96% of all Windows hacks, hijacks, and corruptions happen because the person is using an admin account and they responded to allow some software to run.
It already is.
They already are.
Oh, and there you were doing so well!
Yep, just what I was thinking.
So an article from CNN? It's more likely to be fake than not. So please explain to me why I SHOULD read it?Nearly 30,000 Macs reportedly infected with mysterious malware
Nearly 30,000 Macs worldwide have been infected with mysterious malware, according to researchers at security firm Red Canary.www.cnn.com
Anything from the Communist News Network is 100 percent fake..You overgeneralized in your original comment. This is what the media does. Normally, I wouldn't bother giving a thumbs down for such a comment, even if you are wrong. But you're asking, so I'll answer with a question: Are you a media hack? I mean, hey...you overgeneralized like one, so it's a fair question.
Yes, I've heard it said that 96% of all Windows hacks, hijacks, and corruptions happen because the person is using an admin account and they responded to allow some software to run.
It already is.
They already are.
Oh, and there you were doing so well!
Yep, just what I was thinking.
So an article from CNN? It's more likely to be fake than not. So please explain to me why I SHOULD read it?
OMG, do not tell me that you are one of those who believe that their Mac is immune.
Meh
No. That will be (is already) an option but not the norm. Companies make a lot of money selling you horsepower, storage and accessories on the user end. Remove that and the global stock market would drop significantly and growth would be hard and slow to recover, even if it was gradually implemented.
Putting all apps and users in the cloud runs into scalability problems that are extremely costly for companies. They would have to upgrade more often than they already do because advances in gaming and creative applications mean they need more and more processing power.
And the main bottleneck isn’t the servers, it’s the telecoms and energy infrastructure.
Can you imagine trying to use these cloud apps last week if you were in Texas or anywhere else with similar problems? They have black outs in many parts of the world. If you live in a comfy stable rich part of the world you won’t notice how unstable energy and comms are for many many cities elsewhere.
Don't be _too_ quick to judge. The first virus to circulate "in the wild" was actually Elk Cloner for early Apple systems.
Elk Cloner - Wikipedia
😆
I believe my Mac is _secure_, yes, because I'm not an oblivious user that clicks random stuff. The user will always be the weak link.
Nothing is immune, but computer systems can be secure, when treated as such.
There was no hack. There were users _intentionally_ downloading an installer and installing the software.
It appears it targets all Macs, but since it doesn't actually do anything malicious, nobody gives a rat's ____ about the Intel version.
so true, there has never ever been any malware on intel computers, like ever. Seriously?
I checked three of my macs for the directories in Library, and they aren't there so I haven't been infected yet, but I also aren't on FB, or Twitter anymore either. I'm sure people can be infected through other means, but those are likely the most common. I remember discovering one of my early macs had the Scores virus. I was a mac club librarian at the time. Who knows where I picked it up, which disk out of thousands. The good old days. Scores did essentially nothing.