The Shlayer malware isn’t new. Two years ago when researchers discovered it infecting Mac computers they noted that the malware’s technique of disguising itself as an Adobe Flash Player update could hardly be considered novel either.
And yet, according to a recently-published report from Russian security outfit Kaspersky, there are now almost 32,000 unique variants of Shlayer and it accounts for a staggering 30% of all malware detected by the company’s Mac anti-virus products.
Perhaps even more stunning is another of the company’s statistics – that not only was Shlayer the most commonly-encountered Mac malware of 2019, but that it was seen at least once by 10% of users of Kaspersky’s Mac anti-virus products.
Can “one in ten macOS users” really have been attacked by Shlayer as Kaspersky claims? It feels remarkable if true.
One caveat, of course, is that many Mac users are still not running any anti-virus.
That means it’s possible that Kaspersky’s data is skewed because it is collated from Mac users who have chosen to run security software (and thus might consider themselves more at risk) or it might even mean that Kaspersky is actually *under-reporting* the true level of Shlayer activity because there is no insight on the computers which aren’t running an anti-virus.
Often Shlayer has been distributed via websites claiming to offer a live stream of a soccer match, software cracks, or posing as pirated episodes of popular TV shows. Unsuspecting users mig ..
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