The macOS Background Task Manager tool is supposed to spot potentially malicious software on your machine. But a researcher says it has troubling flaws.
Mac's built-in malware detection tools may not be working quite as well as you think. At the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, longtime Mac security researcher Patrick Wardle presented findings today about vulnerabilities in Apple's macOS Background Task Management mechanism, which could be exploited to bypass and, therefore, defeat the company's recently added monitoring tool.
Apple's Background Task Management tool focuses on watching for software “persistence.” Malware can be designed to be ephemeral and operate only briefly on a device or until the computer restarts. But it can also be built to establish itself more deeply and “persist” on a target even when the computer is shut down and rebooted. Lots of legitimate software needs persistence so all of your apps and data and preferences will show up as you left them every time you turn on your device.
“There should be a tool [that notifies you] when something persistently installs itself, it's a good thing for Apple to have added, but the implementation was done so poorly that any malware that’s somewhat sophisticated can trivially bypass the monitoring,” Wardle says about his Defcon findings.As part of his Objective-See Foundation, which offers free and open source macOS security tools, Wardle has offered a similar persistence event notification tool known asfor years.
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