New and mysterious ‘Silver Sparrow Malware’ infecting 30,000 Macs world-wide
Approximately 30,000 Apple Macs around the world are currently infected with a new computer virus dubbed the Silver Sparrow Malware. Security researchers with Red Canary, a firm providing security measures, open-source tools and education to the information security community, shared their discovery regarding Silver Sparrow earlier this week. What is even more disconcerting about the new malware, is that no-one really knows yet just what it does.
… Silver Sparrow does not “exhibit the behaviors that we’ve come to expect from the usual adware that so often targets macOS systems,” Tony Lambert, an intelligence analyst at Red Canary wrote.
It’s not clear what the malware’s goal is. Silver Sparrow includes a self-destruct mechanism that appears to have not been used, researchers said. It’s also unclear what would trigger that function. ~ CTV News
Lambert went on to announce that, “we quickly realized that we were dealing with what appeared to be a previously undetected strain of malware.”
See Lambert’s report on Red Canary’s site: “Clipping Silver Sparrow’s wings: Outing macOS malware before it takes flight.”
Silver Sparrow is currently reported to be residing on Macs in at least 153 countries around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, England, Germany, and France. The fact that the malware hasn’t gone into destruct mode on those devices yet, suggests that the final payload can be delivered at any time – and Silver Sparrow does have a self-destruct operation. “The malware is uniquely positioned to deliver an impact at any moment,” according to The Free Press Journal.
The Silver Sparrow malware appears to be specifically designed to infect mac operating systems running on Apple’s latest M1 chip architecture. MSN shared a quote from the Red Canary report with a warning from Lambert:
“Though we haven’t observed Silver Sparrow delivering additional malicious payloads yet, its forward-looking M1 chip compatibility, global reach, relatively high infection rate, and operational maturity suggest Silver Sparrow is a reasonably serious threat, uniquely positioned to deliver a potentially impactful payload at a moment’s notice.”
“Given these causes for concern, in the spirit of transparency, we wanted to share everything we know with the broader infosec industry sooner rather than later.”
Although the Red Canary site goes into detail about how to detect the malware on your Mac, there’s not a lot of info currently available on removing Silver Sparrow if your device is infected. A Google search did produce the article and video indicated below.
“How to remove Silver Sparrow malware from the operating system?”
~ Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Follow Richard on Facebook and Twitter
