macos malware years runonly applescripts detection

MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION UPGRADE
MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION CODE
MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION TRIAL

MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION UPGRADE

I tested every single free Mac antivirus program on the market, looking for software that could provide decent anti-malware protection for macOS without forcing users to upgrade to the premium version. Most antivirus brands that offer free products usually make you “pay” with intrusive ads, limited features, and serious vulnerabilities that leave you and your Mac unsecured.

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MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION TRIAL

It’s not 100% free, but it has a risk-free 30-day trial (no credit card needed) and a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s the best macOS antivirus out there - detecting and removing all viruses and malware and ensuring that all Macs stay fast, clean, and optimized. Hopefully, other macOS malware campaigns hinging on similar trickery will no longer be hiding in plain sight so efficiently down the road.Short on time? Here’s the best free Mac antivirus of 2022: With the new detection method in analysts’ toolkit, this cryptominer will likely become more detectable across the AV spectrum. It turns out that OSAMiner operators have recently switched to a tactic where one run-only AppleScript file is embedded in another – as if the one-step obfuscation hadn’t been effective enough for years. They used a mix of a publicly available AppleScript disassembler and their proprietary decompiler solution to unearth the architecture of the sneaky malware.

The silver lining is that experts at SentineLabs have found a way to overcome this obstacle.

MACOS MALWARE YEARS RUNONLY APPLESCRIPTS DETECTION CODE

It’s all about the use of run-only AppleScripts, a mechanism that makes it extremely problematic to reverse-engineer code because it’s deeply compiled and isn’t human-readable.

Whereas these are vanilla hallmarks seen across the mainstream cryptominer environment, one characteristic makes OSAMiner stand out from the crowd. Having infiltrated a macOS computer, it gobbles up CPU resources, causes the system to freeze, and keeps victims from opening the Activity Monitor. It has been primarily doing the rounds via booby-trapped copies of pirated applications that run the gamut from popular video games to the Mac edition of the Microsoft Office suite. OSAMiner – a mysterious strain with obfuscation at its coreĪccording to a number of earlier reports by Chinese researchers, the cryptominer under scrutiny debuted in 2015. These latest insights into the pest’s modus operandi showed that it had taken a significant evolutionary leap in the past few months. This quirk had prevented security experts from reversing the code until January 2021, when SentinelOne made a breakthrough in disassembling and decompiling the malware. Its uniqueness stems from the use of what’s called run-only AppleScript files to download and execute the dodgy components.

These would have been garden-variety findings if it weren’t for the fact that the infection has been playing a hide-and-seek game with researchers since around 2015. White hats have demystified a five-year-old Mac cryptomining campaign that hinges on a hugely unorthodox technique to fly under the radar.Īnalysts at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne have recently shed light on a long-running macOS cryptomining malware strain codenamed OSAMiner.

Macos malware years runonly applescripts detection