New Variant Of UpdateAgent Malware Infects Mac Computers With Adware

 Microsoft on Wednesday shed light on a previously undocumented Mac trojan that it said has undergone several iterations since its first appearance in September 2020, effectively granting it an "increasing progression of sophisticated capabilities."

The company's Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team dubbed the new malware family "UpdateAgent," charting its evolution from a barebones information stealer to a second-stage payload distributor as part of multiple attack waves observed in 2021.

"The latest campaign saw the malware installing the evasive and persistent Adload adware, but UpdateAgent's ability to gain access to a device can theoretically be further leveraged to fetch other, potentially more dangerous payloads," the researchers said.

The actively in-development malware is said to be propagated via drive-by downloads or advertisement pop-ups that masquerade as legitimate software like video applications and support agents, even as the authors have made steady improvements that have transformed UpdateAgent into a progressively persistent piece of malware.

Chief among the advancements include the capability to abuse existing user permissions to surreptitiously perform malicious activities and circumvent macOS Gatekeeper controls, a security feature that ensures only trusted applications from identified developers can be installed on a system.

In addition, UpdateAgent has been found to take advantage of public cloud infrastructure, namely Amazon S3 and CloudFront services, to host its second-stage payloads, including adware, in the form of .DMG or .ZIP files.

Once installed, the Adload malware makes use of ad injection software and man-in-the-middle (MitM) techniques to intercept and reroute users' internet traffic through the attacker's servers to insert rogue ads into web pages and search engine results to increase the chances of multiple infections on the devices.

"UpdateAgent is uniquely characterized by its gradual upgrading of persistence techniques, a key feature that indicates this trojan will likely continue to use more sophisticated techniques in future campaigns," the researchers cautioned.

Related word

1. Hacker Tools Free
2. Hacking Tools Pc
3. Computer Hacker
4. Hacker Tools 2019
5. Hacker
6. Github Hacking Tools
7. What Is Hacking Tools
8. Hack Tools Github
9. Hacker Tools Github
10. Hacking Tools Github
11. Github Hacking Tools
12. Pentest Tools For Mac
13. Pentest Tools Find Subdomains
14. Hack Tools For Windows
15. Pentest Tools Subdomain
16. Pentest Tools Website Vulnerability
17. Hack Apps
18. Hack Tools Pc
19. Termux Hacking Tools 2019
20. Pentest Tools Android
21. Pentest Automation Tools
22. Pentest Tools Download
23. Android Hack Tools Github
24. Physical Pentest Tools
25. Hacker Tool Kit
26. Hacking Tools Download
27. What Are Hacking Tools
28. Hacker Tools For Pc
29. Pentest Tools For Mac
30. Tools Used For Hacking
31. Hacking Tools Kit
32. Hacker Security Tools
33. Hak5 Tools
34. How To Make Hacking Tools
35. Growth Hacker Tools
36. Hacker Tools 2019
37. Hack Apps
38. Hacking Tools Download
39. Tools 4 Hack
40. Hacking Tools Github
41. Hacker
42. Hak5 Tools
43. Hacker Tools Apk Download
44. Physical Pentest Tools
45. Hacking Tools Windows
46. Pentest Tools
47. Hacker Tool Kit
48. How To Install Pentest Tools In Ubuntu
49. Hacker Tools Windows
50. Hacking Apps
51. Hack Website Online Tool
52. Hacking Tools For Beginners
53. Hacking Tools Windows
54. What Are Hacking Tools
55. How To Make Hacking Tools
56. Hacker Security Tools
57. Nsa Hack Tools Download
58. Hacker Techniques Tools And Incident Handling