Around 30,000 mac devices with M1 chips have been infected with a very mysterious malware.
This very unusual strain of malware called the ‘silver sparrow’ strain has quietly infiltrated systems in over 150 countries around the globe.
A security company discovered it but no one can establish, as yet, its purpose.
Apple have taken steps to protect and restrict the potential dangers of this odd malware, this has prevented any new devices from being infected.
How can existing users know if they are affected by this malware?
Researchers have discovered that the ‘silver sparrow’ strain doesn’t exhibit the usual traits or behaviours that are the ‘norm’ from targeted adware on MacOS systems.
It calls a ‘command-and-control’ server every hour from the infected device to wait for ‘further instructions’ and no one can work out what those further instructions will be, we can only speculate!
It also has in a place, a system to self destruct which will hide its existence entirely.
This infiltration has been a massive wake up call for Apple. Although the malware seems to be lying ‘dormant’ at the moment, Apple, naturally, are extremely concerned about the high infection rate and its global reach.
Their realisation is that, like Windows, their devices are not immune from attack from Malware. A computer security expert has stated that the attack appeared to be an effort to disprove this long-standing myth that Mac devices were safe without extra antivirus protection.
"It is as if someone was trying a proof of concept of how to move harmful code on to Macs and to control it once there, without ‘hopefully’ including the damaging elements" to make the strong point that no devices are immune from attack from viruses.