Bugs Allowed Hackers To Make Malware Look Like Apple Software (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, hackers could hide malware alongside legitimate Apple code and sneak it past several popular third-party security products for Mac computers, according to new research. This is not a flaw in MacOS but an issue in how third-party security tools implemented Apple's APIs. A researcher from security firm Okta found that several security products for Mac -- including Little Snitch, xFence, and Facebook's OSquery -- could be tricked into believing malware was Apple code, and let it past their defenses. "I can take malicious code and make it look like it's signed by Apple," Josh Pitts, the security researcher at Okta who discovered these bugs, told Motherboard. In a blog post published Tuesday, Pitts explained that the issue lies with how the third-party security tools implemented Apple's code-signing APIs when dealing with Mac's executable files known as Universal or Fat files.

Comments

Re:The balances with security products.

[drinkypoo]

What I "hate" (that's a strong word) is that there's no Free OS that is based first and foremost around the concept of security. I for one would be happy to give up most of my system's performance for a significant improvement in security, especially if the system were also more reliable. I can have a second system for high-performance tasks.

Most people who are not gamers have much more computing power than they really need now (at least in desktops and laptops) and spend most of their time web browsing. Their systems are mostly idle and they could afford to give away substantial performance in exchange for security.