Business Standard

North Korea's Lazarus hackers targeting Apple Mac users with fake job post

The Mac malware campaign is new and not part of previous Lazarus campaigns

Photo: Bloomberg

Photo: Bloomberg

IANS New Delhi

North Korea-based notorious Lazarus hacking group is back in action, targeting Apple Mac users with fake job emails that contain malicious files.

Researchers at cyber-security firm ESET posted a screenshot on Twitter that showed fake job listings from leading crypto exchange Coinbase by Lazarus, famous for spreading the WannaCry ransomware globally in 2017.

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The fake job listing was for an engineering manager, product security, at Coinbase.

"A signed Mac executable disguised as a job description for Coinbase was uploaded to VirusTotal from Brazil. This is an instance of Operation by Lazarus for Mac," the ESET researchers posted in a tweet.

 

The fake job emails have an attachment containing malicious files that can compromise both Intel and Apple chip-powered Mac computers.

"Malware is compiled for both Intel and Apple Silicon. It drops three files: a decoy PDF document, a bundle and a downloader," warned researchers.

The Mac malware campaign is new and not part of previous Lazarus campaigns.

This time, "the bundle is signed July 21 (according to the timestamp) using a certificate issued in February 2022 to a developer named Shankey Nohria. The application is not notarised and Apple has revoked the certificate on August 12," the researchers noted.

Last month, cyber-security researchers linked Lazarus with stealing $100 million worth digital tokens from Harmony, the crypto startup behind Horizon Blockchain Bridge.

The Lazarus Group has perpetrated several large cryptocurrency thefts totalling over $2 billion, and has recently turned its attention to Decentralised Finance (DeFi) services such as cross-chain bridges, according to London-based blockchain analysis provider Elliptic.

The same group is believed to be behind the $540 million hack of Ronin Bridge.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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First Published: Aug 22 2022 | 11:44 AM IST

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