The Mac world is seldom virus-free. Recently, a virus related to Mac was discovered, but there is no significant damage. Security research firm Red Canary published information on an activity cluster that infected more than 29,139 Macs in 150 countries, but one essential item was missing. It is the 'damage' of the virus.
In the report, Red Canary and Malwarebytes announced that a series of recently discovered macOS malware, called ``Silver Sparrow,'' targets Intel and Apple silicon processors. These companies said that although Silver Sparrow has not shown the usual behavior of adware targeting macOS, it still has good reason to see it as a serious threat.
In other words, there is no direct damage. Of course, considering that there is a high possibility that thousands or tens of thousands of Macs have been infected with the virus, of course, the contents of the announcement cannot be completely trusted. It appears to have been found in a location where the payload can be distributed”.
Apple immediately revoked the developer certificate that allowed the virus to spread. Red Canary hasn't been able to figure out why the virus has spread to many Macs in a short period of time, but the virus has the common properties of malicious macOS adware.
Although malicious intent was not immediately visible, Red Canary warned that Silver Sparrow is very likely to be harmful to the system, given the compatibility of the chip, the scale of infection worldwide, the relatively high infection rate, and operational maturity.
The Apple M1 chip had been infected with malware even before Silver Sparrow. Last week, security expert Patrick Wars reported adware compiled specifically for the M1 chips on the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini. Apple also immediately revoked certificates related to this adware.
How Silver Sparrow works inside is detailed on Red Canary's blog.
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