Discovery and analysis by Microsoft researchers of a sophisticated Mac trojan in October exposed a year-long evolution of a malware family—and depicts the rising complexity of threats across platforms. The trojan, tracked as UpdateAgent, started as a relatively basic information-stealer but was observed distributing secondary payloads in the latest campaign, a capability that it added in one of its multiple iterations. Reminiscent of the progression of info-stealing trojans in other platforms, UpdateAgent may similarly become a vector for other threats to infiltrate target systems.
Since its first appearance in September 2020, the malware displayed an increasing progression of sophisticated capabilities, and while the latest two variants were sporting much more refined behavior compared with earlier versions, they show signs that the malware is still in the development stage and more updates are likely to come. 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.
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Source: Microsoft