Quote:Three months after Apple launched its new M1 system-on-a-chip (SoC), cybercriminals have developed what may be the first malicious macOS application targeting the mobile giant’s first in-house silicon.
 
The recently uncovered malicious application, called GoSearch22, natively runs on M1 — meaning that it executes software written for M1-powered devices’ natural, basic mode of operation. The main differentiator here is that the application includes code tailored to run on ARM-based M1 processors – rather than only the Intel x86 processors previously utilized by Apple.
 
The application downloads a variant of Pirrit, which is a type of adware. Mac-targeting adware, which displays pesky advertisements on user computers, is a prevalent and continuous threat for Apple devices. Apple has since revoked the certificate for the malicious application.
 
“Apple’s new M1 systems offer a myriad of benefits, and natively compiled ARM64 code runs blazingly fast,” said Apple-specializing researcher Patrick Wardle, who discovered the application, on Wednesday. “Today, we highlighted the fact that malware authors have now joined the ranks of developers …(re)compiling their code to ARM64 to gain natively binary compatibility with Apple’s latest hardware.”