The Mac Malware of 2022 - A comprehensive analysis of the year's new malware

guest · Jan 7, 2023

Many of 13 New Mac Malware Families Discovered in 2022 Linked to China
By Eduard Kovacs @EduardKovacs - January 6, 2023

More than a dozen new Mac malware families were discovered in 2022, including information stealers, cryptocurrency miners, loaders, and backdoors, and many of them have been linked to China.
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Mac security expert Patrick Wardle has compiled a list of the macOS malware that came to light over the course of last year. The number of new malware appears to be increasing as only eight new families were spotted in 2021.

The first malware to emerge in 2022 was SysJoker, a cross-platform backdoor used by an APT actor in targeted attacks. SysJoker, observed targeting an educational institution, can download and execute other malicious components.
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The second macOS malware, DazzleSpy, was used as part of a state-sponsored cyberespionage campaign aimed at pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. The malware has been described as a backdoor and information stealer, and the main suspect behind these attacks is China.

Another new piece of malware, which may be linked to DazzleSpy, has been named VPN Trojan (Covid) and it has been described as a persistent backdoor that can download and execute second stage payloads directly from memory.
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Three of the new Mac malware families identified in 2022 relied on typosquatting to spread.

The list of new macOS malware also includes KeySteal, a keychain stealer delivered via trojanized versions of a free app, and the cryptocurrency miner CoinMiner, which uses various open source components and I2P for stealthy communications.
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Objective-See (Patrick Wardle): The Mac Malware of 2022

For the 7th year in a row, I’ve put together a blog post that comprehensively covers all the new Mac malware that appeared during the course of the year.

After reading this blog post, you should have a thorough understanding of recent threats targeting macOS. This is especially important as Macs continue to flourish, especially compared to other personal computers brands. In fact, an industry report from late 2022 showed that the year-over-year growth of all of the top 5 computer companies declined significantly …except for Apple who saw a 40% increase!
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This growth is especially apparent in the context of the enterprise so much that many believe “Mac will become the dominant enterprise endpoint by 2030”:
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Rasheed187 · Jan 7, 2023

Haven't read everything yet, since it's a quite comprehensive article. But it would be nice to know if macOS built-in security like Gatekeeper and XProtect were able to block this stuff from day one, hopefully this is mentioned in the article.

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The Mac Malware of 2022 - A comprehensive analysis of the year's new malware

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