An AppleScript feature designed to compress scripts into pre-compiled form has allowed bad actors to evade security researchers for years. This cryptominer Trojan spread unchecked for some five years. So-called run-only scripts-what we might today call “bytecode”-are poorly documented and difficult to analyze. So it’s hard to extract indicators of compromise out of malware obfuscated by them. What can DevOps learn from this? In this week’s Security Blogwatch, we learn lessons (not “learnings”). Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: What everyone really wants. What’s the craic? Ionut Ilascu reports- Mac malware uses 'run-only' AppleScripts to evade analysis: A cryptocurrency mining campaign … is using malware that has evolved into a complex variant giving researchers a lot of trouble analyzing it. has been in the wild since at least 2015. Yet analyzing it is difficult because … it embeds a run-only AppleScript into another script and uses URLs in public web pages to download the actual … payloads. Run-only AppleScript … makes decompiling them into source code a tall order. … Security researchers at SentinelOne … were able to reverse engineer some samples they collected by using a lesser-known AppleScript disassembler (Jinmo’s applescript-disassembler) and a decompiler tool developed internally.Īnd Catalin Cimpanu adds- macOS malware used run-only AppleScripts to avoid detection for five years: A sneaky malware operation … 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. "OSAMiner has been active for a long time and has evolved in recent months," a SentinelOne spokesperson. "It appears to be mostly targeted at Chinese/Asia-Pacific communities."Īs users installed the 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. Is it hot in here? Phil Stokes the fire- Adventures in Reversing Malicious Run-Only AppleScripts: OSAMiner is a cryptominer campaign that has resisted full researcher analysis for at least five years. … One of the nice things about AppleScript is not only does it have a magic at the beginning of an AppleScript file it also has one to mark the end of the script: … fa de de ad or FADE DEAD. '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. 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 … shows exactly how powerful run-only AppleScripts can be for evasion and anti-analysis.
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