LockBit, a notorious ransomware gang, has reportedly developed encryptors that can target macOS systems, according to researchers at MalwareHunterTeam. This marks the first time that any ransomware group has created such encryptors to target macOS. The LockBit encryptors for macOS were discovered in a ZIP archive uploaded to VirusTotal.
Although the archive contained previously unknown encryptors for macOS and other architectures, including PowerPC CPUs used in older macOS systems, the encryptors cannot be used in actual attacks against macOS systems.
It speculated that the encryptors in the archive could have been created for testing purposes due to the presence of strings in the encryption that are out of place in a macOS encryptor.
One of the encryptors developed by Lockbit, named ‘locker_Apple_M1_64’, can encrypt files of Mac systems running on the Apple silicon M1. The VX-underground research team argues that the macOS variant has been available since November 11, 2022, while the popular malware researcher Florian Roth claims to have found an Apple M1 encryptor that was uploaded to VirusTotal in December 2022.
However, the archive was bundled as of March 20, 2023. Furthermore, the experts pointed out that the archive has builds for ARM, FreeBSD, MIPS, and SPARC architectures.
The discovery is alarming and demonstrates the efforts of the LockBit group to expand its operation to also target Apple systems. It’s also worth noting that the encryptor for macOS is not notarized, meaning it won’t run easily on macOS if downloaded from the internet.
It also contains a bug that triggers a buffer overflow, which terminates the program. Additionally, it doesn’t appear to take into account macOS security mechanisms that protect files (such as TCC, SIP, etc.), so it won’t be able to encrypt much of anything.
Nonetheless, the findings indicate that threat actors are becoming more sophisticated and are constantly looking for ways to expand their attack surface. It’s important to ensure that macOS systems are kept up-to-date with the latest security patches and that appropriate security measures, such as anti-malware software, are installed.
