Cybercriminals are targeting Mac users with a new proxy trojan malware bundled with popular, copyrighted macOS software being offered on warez sites.
Proxy trojan malware infects computers, turning them into traffic-forwarding terminals used to anonymize malicious or illegal activities such as hacking, phishing, and transactions for illicit goods.
Selling access to proxies is a
lucrative business that has given birth to
massive botnets, with Mac devices
not being spared by this widespread activity.
The latest campaign pushing proxy malware was discovered by
Kaspersky, which reports the earliest submission of the payload on VirusTotal dates to April 28, 2023.
Bundled with popular warez
The campaign takes advantage of people's willingness to risk their computer's security to avoid paying for premium apps.
Kaspersky found 35 image editing, video compression and editing, data recovery, and network scanning tools laced with the proxy trojan to bait users looking for free versions of commercial software.
The most popular of the trojanized software in this campaign are:
