If malware is wiped from memory and unable to relaunch after a single reboot or user logout, it’s usually not worth the effort to develop or distribute it. If a piece of malware cannot obtain persistence, its overall impact is greatly diminished. Most malware needs to achieve persistence to achieve its purpose, which could be anything nefarious to an organization, such as serving as a backdoor into a system or stealing passwords. Malware can and does abuse these mechanisms. Like other operating systems, macOS includes a wide variety of persistence mechanisms out of the box, to give legitimate software-such as security tools or updaters-persistence. For instance, a system restart will not affect malware that has achieved persistence that malware will automatically relaunch when the device powers back on or the user logs in again. Persistence ensures that malware will continue to operate regardless of user operations. Persistence allows malware to relaunch itself automatically following a predetermined event, such as a device startup, user login, or other events that malware ‘listens’ for.
Persistence refers to various ways that malware tries to maintain access to a system. Today, we’ll summarize some of the key points Patrick makes about one aspect of Mac malware: how it achieves a persistent presence on the Mac computers it infects. Patrick is the founder of the Objective-See Foundation and the author of The Art of Mac Malware (which is free to read online).
That interest has led to an increase in malware targeting Mac computers and in malware infections.įor those concerned about Mac malware, there's no better resource than Patrick Wardle. Apple consistently retools each version of its operating system to include better intrinsic defenses against such threats.īut as Apple devices continue to proliferate across the enterprise-in 2021, IDC found, macOS accounted for 23% of computers in use in the enterprise-attackers continue to target them. When it comes to malware, IT and security staff are well aware of the most common infection vectors: malicious emails or attachments, Trojanized applications, or attackers leveraging both known and unknown exploits.
0 kommentar(er)
