Nearly 30,000 Macs reportedly infected with mysterious malware

[Barney T. Administrators]

"Nearly 30,000 Macs world-wide have been infected with mysterious malware, according to researchers at security firm Red Canary.

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."

 

Source: CNN  https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/tech/mac-mysterious-malware/index.html

[+Warwagon MVC]

I've always said, it's not that Mac's can't get viruses, it's that nobody cares enough to write one due to the market share. But when someone actually cares enough it usually affects a good chunk of them due to most of them not running any security software, though i'm not sure how well the security software would have prevented this.

[Circaflex]

2 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Many tech enthusiasts have always said, it's not that Mac's can't get viruses, it's that nobody cares enough to write one due to the markets share. But when someone actually cares enough it usually affects a good chunk of them due to most of them not running any security software, though i'm not sure how well the security software would have prevented this.

I fixed it for you.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Parasitic computer viruses—that is, actual recursively-self-replicating-programs-whose-children-and-children's-children-are-possibly-evolved-copies, are actually pretty rare on Windows now.  Only a handful of families are left (Ramnit, Sality, Virut, etc.) and even between all their variations, account for about a single-digit, percentage-wise, of what anti-virus/anti-malware/internet security/{insert name-du-jour here} companies see on a daily basis.  The majority of what is seen is various forms on non-replicating malicious software (malware), such as trojan horses, multi-stage downloaders, cryptocurrency miners, ransomware and other things you might not want on your computer (adware, spyware, privacy-invasive stuff and so forth). 

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky