In illegal copies of Apple’s Final Cut Pro, a crypto-jacking program was discovered by Minneapolis-based cybersecurity company Jamf Threat Labs. Apple chip speed, according to Jamf, will make Macs more common targets for cyberattacks.
According to their report, Jamf
“We discovered an alert indicating XMRig use, a command-line crypto-mining tool, during normal monitoring of our threat detections in the wild. Although XMRig is frequently employed for good reasons, bad actors also favor it because of its versatile, open-source nature.
Unauthorized versions of Apple video editing software, according to the cybersecurity firm for Apple software, are a Trojan Horse. It was running XMRig to mine cryptocurrency using their computer without the knowledge of any small-time cybercriminals who copied the Apple software.
The Jamf report goes on to say:
“This particular instance was of interest to us as it was executed under the guise of the Apple-developed video editing software, Final Cut Pro. Further investigation revealed that this malicious version of Final Cut Pro contained a modification unauthorized by Apple that was executing XMRig in the background.”
With the current capability of Apple ARM processors, the security firm warns that “cryptojacking” virus will become an increasingly prevalent threat for Mac users.