New Mac Ransomware Discovered Spreading Through Pirated Programs

Listen, it’s never a good idea to download pirated software, but yet people do. There are many reasons for this, first of all it’s illegal. Secondly, because the source you’re downloading it from might not necessarily be trusted, and there could be some changes made that would hide malicious files inside of the installation.

Unfortunately, some Mac users are finding out the hard way because according to a report from Malwarebytes, there seems to be a new “EvilQuest” ransomware that is targeting Mac computers that is also being spread through pirated Mac apps. This was discovered when some users downloaded the “Little Snitch” app from a Russian forum, where the download actually contained the app itself, but also installed an additional executable file.

This malware is pretty smart in that upon installation, the file is moved to a new location and is renamed to “CrashReporter” to keep itself hidden in macOS’ Activity Monitor. Like most ransomware, it will proceed to encrypt all the files on the Mac computer and apparently, users will need to pay $50 to decrypt their files to get them back.

In addition to locking up your files, it has also been suggested that the malware will install a keylogger to monitor your keystrokes, presumably in hopes that you might be entering sensitive information like credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and so on. So the next time you’re tempted to download pirated software, you might want to take this into consideration.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Computers
Tags: macOS, Malware, Piracy