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M1 Macs Targeted by Additional Malware, Exact Threat Remains a Mystery
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Hi deific,
Thanks for letting me know. Am I correct to assume that even though it runs through Rosetta 2, it’s still providing the same protection to an M1 Mac that it would provide to an Intel Mac?
The security research say it's a big deal NOT because it's exploiting some zero-day vulnerability, but its purpose remains unknown.
If you read carefully into the researcher's post, you will find that all this "malware" did are actually legit: they use the Apple's documented API and follows the rule. They only thing unusual is that they didn't put scripts as static data inside the package but dynamically generate scripts to be executed. While this is not "illegal", but definitely not a conventional approach any coder with sense will do. They suspect it's doing that to avoid detection, but they didn't find anything "illegal" that will make it "get caught".
Under this circumstance it's not hard to imagine the reaction of these researchers: "we don't know what it's doing, but someone is definitely plotting something big". And that's why we got this story.
Then again, anything not standard in common is 'suspicious' regardless of the legality...
If every developer dynamically did it this way nothing would be a problem.. Its only if when stands out, it could be an the issue. Apple is just following best practice for sake to protect their customers.. There is nothing wrong being cautious.
If every developer dynamically did it this way nothing would be a problem.. Its only if when stands out, it could be an the issue. Apple is just following best practice for sake to protect their customers.. There is nothing wrong being cautious.
I have the basic 8/256. Turns out Apple replaced battery, logic board, display assembly, Touch ID board and speakers. What a mess. Seems to working fine now.
Sounds like they should have just shipped you a new laptop! Agreed, what a mess.
I asked them many times to consider doing just that. Considering all the parts apple replaced it's almost a different machine.
Apologies for not responding sooner, yes it works through Rosetta 2 and is offering all the same protections as a native app.
I think the efficiency has been pretty good so far: 0% CPU for the Malwarebytes Agent and 15.2MB of RAM during idle and 0.5% to 0.9% CPU when actively scanning. There were a few previous revs of the software which were a bit resource intensive and I'm happy to report the latest version seems to be pretty trim.
Apple did this to themselves - before the Intel days viruses were very very little.. now, with Apple’s Macs more popular because of an OS which is really not that great as it used to be, Macs are far more targeted by viruses and malware than ever. Thank you, Emperor Cook !
Two parts: The transition from IBM to Intel - in my mind totally justified and good. Then the fast design and release cycle - this is where I agree with you, the revs need more time between major releases.
Steve Jobs headed the decisions and transition from IBM to Intel, so you can't really blame Tim Cook for that.
Apple was stuck, to this day IBM hasn't released processors that can compete with Intel or the M1 Apple processors. We waited so many years for a G5 processor on anything and it was just too power hungry. If you want faster processors you have to work through any option available and at some point you have to cut your losses and go to plan B.
Plan B with Intel worked out quite a bit better than expected and opened up virtualization like Parallels/VMWare, gaming, much more excitement from developers.
Most of the malware we see these days comes from simple stuff like browser plugins, and those are cross platform. So those malicious pieces of software would have affected Firefox and Chrome running on a G5 just as much as Intel, or M1.
As for other malware apps, as it becomes easier to develop on the Mac/iPhone/iPad and more users are on the devices we see more benefit to creating these malicious apps. Easier to develop = cheaper. More people using = more revenue opportunities.
Apps take money to create, and financial reasons drive most of the malware development. So if there's a high level of ROI the developer will eat the expense to create the apps.
If there's high profile people using the platform, there's also higher ROI in terms of financial gain and informational gain.
This is true no matter what platform you're talking about.
Can Apple do a better job? Oh absolutely.. the 1 year development cycle is probably the main culprit and problem I see. There just isn't enough time to do a ton of QA before the product is released, updates are released, then begin work on the next version.
We really need some more solid updates that just fix a bunch of bugs and make things run smoother, like Snow Leopard or various iOS versions (can't recall which).