Bugging Out: Fruitfly Malware Swarms MacOS Users
By Douglas Bonderud | July 25, 2017
Back in January, a new piece of MacOS malware – dubbed Fruitfly – was found in the wild, infecting and compromising hundreds of devices over the last decade.
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While Apple released a patch for the strain found in January, version 2.0 of this bug continued to evade detection for another six months.
…that 90 percent of the victims were in the U.S., with a larger concentration in Ohio. He believed that the malware is the work of a single cybercriminal, rather than a nation-state actor.
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Fruitfly malware seems to have naturally reached end of life. Still, two problems persist. First is overconfidence. While it’s unlikely that MacOS was compromised, many users remain convinced that Mac defenses will prevent any infection no matter how or where they surf the web.
The second problem is the ability of this malware to fly under the radar for years, even as it took complete control of victims’ devices … its infection methods and abilities remain relative unknowns, meaning there’s plenty of room for new swarms to emerge and challenge MacOS security.
Fruitfly is a reminder that MacOS isn’t infallible, and malware isn’t one-size-fits-all. Even ordinary users are now under threat from bothersome bugs.
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