Red Canary security researchers announced Friday that malware they dubbed Silver Sparrow was found on nearly 30,000 macOS devices. Silver Sparrow is notable for a few reasons: it already targets Apple silicon, it's set to remove all traces of itself when it detects a specific file, and it doesn't seem like it actually does anything yet. Researchers at MalwareBytes and VMWare Carbon Black contributed to Red Canary's findings. MalwareBytes data showed that Silver Sparrow had infected 29,139 devices in the U.S., UK, Canada, France, Germany, and 148 other countries as of February 17. The actual number of infections is probably higher; MalwareBytes isn't omniscient. Red Canary said it discovered two versions of Silver Sparrow. The first only targeted macOS devices featuring Intel processors, but the second expanded to include the M1 chip that Apple introduced in November 2020, which means the malware's unidentified creators are among the first to target the company's Arm-based silicon. But so far, Silver Sparrow doesn't actually deliver a payload to infected devices. The first version of the malware contained a binary that simply displayed a "Hello, World!" message; the second displayed a message saying, "You did it!" Red Canary said the binaries were likely placeholders… Read full this story
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