Researchers at Black Hat Asia will demonstrate a new framework they created for catching and studying Apple MacOS malware.
Malware targeting Windows machines still dominates the threat landscape, but hackers gradually have been expanding their target range to increasingly popular Apple MacOS platforms. A team of researchers now has created an automated MacOS malware analyzer that streamlines and simplifies the process of detecting and studying the growing ecosystem of malicious code targeting Macs.
MacOS research tools typically have relied on manual analysis of malware, notes Pham Duy Phuc, a malware analyst with Netherlands-based Sfylabs BV. Phuc says he first began developing the so-called Mac-A-Mal tool while pursuing his Master's Degree at the University of Trento in Italy.
"There are tools for malware reverse-engineering, debugging, and malware analysis on Mac," including commercial tools like Hopper and IDA, and open-source tools like Radare2, MachO View, lldb, Otool, and Dtrace, Phuc noted in an email interview. But these tools mostly require manual analysis, which means the researcher also must have some know-how in order to use them.
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