Tag Archive for: mysterious

Hackers slip mysterious malware into 30K Apple Macs

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Security researchers have discovered a mysterious malware on nearly 30,000 Apple Macs and they have no idea what this is for and how is this virus going to infected the devices.

The malware named ‘Silver Sparrow’ comes with a mechanism to self-destruct itself, a capability that’s typically reserved for high-stealth operations.

“So far, though, there are no signs the self-destruct feature has been used, raising the question of why the mechanism exists,” Ars Technica first reported about the presence of malware citing security researchers.

The lack of a final payload suggests that the malware may spring into action anytime.

The malware has been found in 153 countries with heavy detection reported in the US, the UK, Canada, France and Germany.

Silver Sparrow is an activity cluster that includes a binary compiled to run on Apple’s new M1 chips but lacks one very important feature: a payload.

“Though we haven’t observed Silver Sparrow delivering additional malicious payloads yet, its forward-looking M1 chip compatibility, global reach, relatively high infection rate, and operational maturity suggest Silver Sparrow is a reasonably serious threat,” according to researchers from cyber security firm Red Canary.

The malware is uniquely positioned to deliver a potentially impactful payload at a moment’s notice.

Silver Sparrow comes in two versions — one with a binary in mach-object format compiled for Intel x86_64 processors and the other Mach-O binary for the M1.

Researchers have earlier warned that Apple’s transition from Intel to its own silicon M1 chip may make it easy for hackers to introduce malware.

“To me, the most notable [thing] is that it was found on almost 30K macOS endpoints… and these are only endpoints the MalwareBytes can see, so the number is likely way higher,” said Patrick Wardle, a macOS security expert.

–IANS

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Nearly 30,000 Macs reportedly infected with mysterious malware

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The malware, which the company calls Silver Sparrow, does not “exhibit the behaviors that we’ve come to expect from the usual adware that so often targets macOS systems,” Tony Lambert, an intelligence analyst at Red Canary wrote.

It’s not clear what the malware’s goal is. Silver Sparrow includes a self-destruct mechanism that appears to have not been used, researchers said. It’s also unclear what would trigger that function.

Notably, Silver Sparrow contains code that runs natively on Apple’s in-house M1 chip that was released in November, making only the second known malware to do so, according to the news site Ars Technica.

“Though we haven’t observed Silver Sparrow delivering additional malicious payloads yet, its forward-looking M1 chip compatibility, global reach, relatively high infection rate, and operational maturity suggest Silver Sparrow is a reasonably serious threat,” researchers wrote.

Silver Sparrow infected Macs in 153 countries as of February 17, with higher concentrations reported in the US, UK, Canada, France and Germany, according to data from Malwarebytes, a website that blocks ransomware attacks.

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Mysterious Bugs Were Used to Hack iPhones and Android Phones and No One Will Talk About It

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hacked-phone-worm

Image: Cathryn Virginia/VICE

Google’s elite teams of bug and malware hunters found and disclosed a flurry of high impact vulnerabilities in Chrome, Android, Windows, and iOS last week. The internet giant also said that these various vulnerabilities were all “actively exploited in the wild.” In other words, hackers were using these bugs to actually hack people, which is concerning. 

What’s more, all these vulnerabilities are in some way related to each other, Motherboard has learned. That potentially means the same hackers were using them. According to the disclosure reports, some bugs were in font libraries, and others were used to escape the sandbox in Chrome, and others were used to take control of the whole system, suggesting some of these bugs were part of a chain of vulnerabilities used to exploit victim’s devices.  

So far, very little information has come out about who may have been using the exploits and who they were targeting. Often, bugs in modern software are found and are ethically disclosed by security researchers, which means that they are fixed before they are widely exploited to hack people. In this case, however, we know that the bugs were being used for hacking operations. 

Last year, Google found a series of zero-days—vulnerabilities that at the time of discovery are unknown to the software maker—that spies were using to target the Uighur community. China has conducted a widespread, systemic campaign of physical and technical oppression and surveillance against the Muslim minority. 

“This feels like spy shit.”

Unfortunately, this time we don’t know any details because Google—the only company that has the whole story behind these bugs—has not said much at all about how it found the bugs, who was using them, and whom they were being used against. Notably, an update pushed to iOS 12 (which is two years old) patched the issue on phones dating back to the iPhone 5s and iPhone 6. Often, when updates are pushed to such old devices it means the bug is particularly bad, but, again, we do not know the specifics at this time.

“The fact that they updated iPhone 6 users means it was bad,” said a cybersecurity expert who asked not to be named because he wasn’t allowed…

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A mysterious group has hijacked Tor exit nodes to perform SSL stripping attacks – ZDNet

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A mysterious group has hijacked Tor exit nodes to perform SSL stripping attacks  ZDNet
“HTTPS hijacking” – read more