Nearly 30,000 Macs have been infected with Silver Sparrow malware, and researchers are unsure how

A malware called Silver Sparrow infected nearly 30,000 Apple Macs with macOSThis even affects computers with Apple’s new silicon M1 chip. The data was discovered by security researchers on Red Canary who then worked to analyze the problem with others from Malwarebytes and VMWare Carbon Black.

The incidence of these 29,139 cases is widespread, since Silver Sparrow hit teams from 153 countries through February 17th. The most intense malicious activity, according to the study, was in the US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany. It is no coincidence that in several of these countries the market share of Apple devices is above average.

The cause of the infection is unclear

Researchers monitor the effects of malware, without actually seeing the final impact when they analyzed it. That is, they were able to access the infected computers, but the malware was just waiting to receive external commands in the form of commands that never arrived during the process in which they witnessed their incident.

Even so, Red Canary warns that Silver Sparrow poses no threat to the observed lack of activityas it could even be a mechanism that runs in the discovery of discovery tools for investigators. The biggest problem right now is that you don’t know your possible future manifestation It is also unclear how Silver Sparrow infects so many computers.

Research has shown that malware can be accompanied by pirated copies of apps, malicious advertisements or fake Flash updaters, which remains one of the most active ways of “infection” under macOS even after the departure from Flash. As always, many of these installations are performed after bypassing Gatekeeper security in “System Preferences”.

Via | ZDNet