A new variant of the multi-stage Shlayer malware known to target macOS users has been observed in the wild, now being capable to escalate privileges using a two-year-old technique and to disable the Gatekeeper protection mechanism to run unsigned second stage payloads.
Shlayer was first observed in action by Intego's research team which found it being distributed as part of a malware campaign during
February 2018, disguising as a fake Adobe Flash Player installer like many other malware families targeting the Mac platform.
Just like it did in the past, the new malware version is also distributed as a malicious Adobe Flash software update, but unlike the original version which was pushed through torrent websites, Shlayer is now spreading as fake update pop-ups on hijacked domains or legitimate sites clones, or as part of malvertising campaigns running on legitimate websites.