Apple launched its M1 chip and cybercriminals developed a malware sample specifically for it, the latest generation of Macs are their next targets.
The popular security researcher Patrick Wardle discovered one of the first malware designed to target latest generation of Apple devices using the company M1 chip.
The discovery suggests threat actors are tailoring their malware to target the latest generation of Mac devices using the own processors.
Wardle discovered a Safari adware extension, tracked as GoSearch22, that was initially developed to run on Intel x86 chips, and now it was adapted to run on M1 chips.
“What we do know is as this binary was detected in the wild (and submitted by a user via an Objective-See tool) …so whether it was notarized or not, macOS users were infected.” reads the analysis published by Wardle. “Looking at the (current) detection results (via the anti-virus engines on VirusTotal), it appears the GoSearch22.app is an instance of the prevalent, yet rather insidious, ‘Pirrit’ adware:”