WireLurker

Yesterday Palo Alto Networks released a report on a new OSX & iOS malware, WireLurker.  The best write-up I have seen so far is here: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=4140

A couple pertinent points:

-Currently only circulated through Chinese warez – seems to be targeting identifying information of users only (possibly to identify key players in the Chinese software-pirating market?)

-The concern is not so much about WireLurker itself, but “…that this technique could be weaponized in the future, and be a viable means of attack on public and private sector machines.”

-If you are interested in detecting if a device has been compromised, see here:  https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks-BD/WireLurkerDetector – If anybody has IDS sigs yet, please let me know….

 

Key Takeways:

-Remind users that jailbreaking your phone (whether android or iphone) nets you less security – better yet, enforce policies that disallow jailbreaking devices that have organizational data on it

-“While your own Mac may not be infected with WireLurker, it’s possible others (in your school, college, at work, or public computers) are, so it’s important not to trust any devices other than your own. To help prevent this from accidentally happening, you may wish to pair lock your device using these instructions.”

We need to continue to help foster cultural change that surrounds most of our Mac users – the fallacy that if you have a Mac, you don’t need to worry about security issues… “Only PC users need to worry about that.”