Combining a public AppleScript disassembler repo with our own AEVT decompiler tool allowed us to statically reverse run-only AppleScripts for the first time and reveal previously unknown details about the campaign and the malware’s architecture.macOS.OSAMiner has evolved to use a complex architecture, embedding one run-only AppleScript within another and retrieving further stages embedded in the source code of public-facing web pages.macOS.OSAMiner is a cryptominer campaign that has resisted full researcher analysis for at least five years due to its use of multiple run-only AppleScripts.For more than five years, macOS users have been the targets of a sneaky malware operation that used a clever trick to avoid detection and hijacked the hardware resources of infected users to mine cryptocurrency behind their backs. Named OSAMiner, the malware has been distributed in the wild since at least 2015 disguised in pirated (cracked) games and software such as League of Legends and Microsoft Office for Mac, security firm SentinelOne said in a report published this week. “OSAMiner has been active for a long time and has evolved in recent months,” a SentinelOne spokesperson told ZDNet in an email interview on Monday. “From what data we have it appears to be mostly targeted at Chineses/Asia-Pacific communities,” the spokesperson added. Nested run-only AppleScripts, for the win!īut the cryptominer did not go entirely unnoticed. SentinelOne said that two Chinese security firms spotted and analyzed older versions of the OSAMiner in August and September 2018, respectively.īut their reports only scratched the surface of what OSAMiner was capable of, SentinelOne macOS malware researcher Phil Stokes said yesterday. The primary reason was that security researchers weren’t able to retrieve the malware’s entire code at the time, which used nested run-only AppleScript files to retrieve its malicious code across different stages.Īs users installed the pirated software, the boobytrapped installers would download and run a run-only AppleScript, which would download and run a second run-only AppleScript, and then another final third run-only AppleScript. #MALWARE YEARS USED RUNONLY AVOID FIVE DOWNLOAD# Since “run-only” AppleScript come in a compiled state where the source code isn’t human-readable, this made analysis harder for security researchers. #MALWARE YEARS USED RUNONLY AVOID FIVE CODE# Yesterday, Stokes published the full-chain of this attack, along with indicators of compromise (IOCs) of past and newer OSAMiner campaigns. Stokes and the SentinelOne team hope that by finally cracking the mystery surrounding this campaign and by publishing IOCs, other macOS security software providers would now be able to detect OSAMiner attacks and help protect macOS users. “In this case, we have not seen the actor use any of the more powerful features of AppleScript that we’ve discussed elsewhere, but that is an attack vector that remains wide open and which many defensive tools are not equipped to handle.” “Run-only AppleScripts are surprisingly rare in the macOS malware world, but both the longevity of and the lack of attention to the macOS.OSAMiner campaign, which has likely been running for at least 5 years, shows exactly how powerful run-only AppleScripts can be for evasion and anti-analysis,” Stokes concluded in his report yesterday. The IOCs are available in the SentinelOne OSAMiner report, here. Spyware is software that resides on a computer and sends information to its creator. That information may include surfing habits, system details or, in its most dangerous form, passwords and login information for critical applications such as online banking. Many spyware programs are more annoying than dangerous, serving up pop-up ads or gathering e-mail addresses for use in spam campaigns. Even those programs, however, can cost you valuable time and computing resources. Often, spyware comes along with a free software application, such as a game or a supposed productivity booster. #MALWARE YEARS USED RUNONLY AVOID FIVE DOWNLOAD#.#MALWARE YEARS USED RUNONLY AVOID FIVE CODE#.#MALWARE YEARS USED RUNONLY AVOID FIVE SOFTWARE#.
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