macOS Components Used in North Korean Crypto-Heists
Contents
In this unique talk, Proofpoint’s Greg Lesnewich takes us on a tour of recent North Korean APTs targeting macOS devices and offers researchers new techniques for hunting this increasingly active cluster through similarity analysis of Mach-O binaries and linked dynamic libraries.
While many state-aligned threats have dipped their toes into macOS Malware, North Korea has invested serious time and effort into compromising Apple’s desktop operating system. Its operations in macOS environments include both espionage and financial gain. macOS malware analysis is an exciting space, but most blogs on the subject deal with functionality and capability, rather than how to find more similar samples. Analysts are forced to rely on string searching, based on disassembler output or a strings dump; in contrast, executables for Windows have “easy” pivots such as import hashing or rich headers that help analysts to find additional samples without much effort.
This talk introduces some of those easy pivots …
While many state-aligned threats have dipped their toes into macOS Malware, North Korea has invested serious time and effort into compromising Apple’s desktop operating system. Its operations in macOS environments include both espionage and financial gain. macOS malware analysis is an exciting space, but most blogs on the subject deal with functionality and capability, rather than how to find more similar samples. Analysts are forced to rely on string searching, based on disassembler output or a strings dump; in contrast, executables for Windows have “easy” pivots such as import hashing or rich headers that help analysts to find additional samples without much effort.
This talk introduces some of those easy pivots …