Mac OS X Trojan hides behind malicious PDF disguise

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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A fascinating new example of Mac malware has been discovered, that appears to be adopting an old Windows-style disguise to fool users into running it.

Despite the numerous times that cybercriminals have created boobytrapped PDF files that exploit vulnerabilities to infect unsuspecting users, many people still think that PDF files are somehow magically safer to open than conventional programs.

The OSX/Revir-B Trojan plays on this by posing as a PDF file.

When the malicious Macintosh application file is run it tries to drop a PDF embedded inside it onto the user’s hard drive. The Chinese language PDF file displayed is about a controversial topic, “Do the Diaoyu Islands belong to Japan?”

The Diaoyu Islands (known as the Senkaku islands in Japan) are the subject of a…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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