Be it for macOS or my dog eating out of the trash, there is no such thing as a bullet-proof security policy. It’s all about creating a threshold of standards- something to work off of while simultaneously reducing overall risk (you know, like storing your trash can on the counter, for example).

As a part of a pretty crazy week (Microsoft/RDS, Apple/Mojave/High Sierra, Adobe Acrobat/ Flash Player) when it comes to security updates, some new speculative execution vulnerabilities were disclosed and fixed.

This previous blog post explored ways to use osquery for macOS malware analysis. Using the same methodology introduced there, we analyzed five additional macOS malware variants and recorded their behavior to understand the techniques they used. Below, you’ll find the techniques used by Calisto, Dummy, HiddenLotus, LamePyre and WireLurker. Read on to explore how to translate the techniques used by these malware into queries you can run to hunt for the active presence or historical artifacts using osquery.

Osquery, at its most basic level, is an operating system instrumentation framework that exposes the OS as a SQL database. SQL queries can be run to view information about the systems similar to any SQL database, providing a unified cross platform framework (i.e. endpoints running on multiple operating systems can be queried using the industry standard database language: SQL. This structured approach for collecting and accessing data introduces great flexibility, making it useful for multiple purposes. For example, queries can be constructed to audit infrastructure for compliance, vulnerabilities, malware analysis and intrusion detection, etc. Data collected by osquery can be useful to anybody from IT support teams to CSIRTs. However, in this blog post we’ll narrow our focus and explore how to use osquery specifically for macOS malware analysis (though the methodologies discussed are the same for Windows and Linux operating systems).

Last week, Malwarebytes posted an article highlighting new malware discovered by John Lambert (Microsoft), Patrick Wardle (Objective-See and Digita Security) and Adam Thomas (Malwarebytes), and sure enough, persistence using launchd is still a common thing.

There’s a dangerous myth among some Mac users that, unlike Windows, the platform is impervious to malware. Since nothing is bulletproof, it would be dangerous to assume Mac fleet security, so let’s recognize why Macs have historically been low risk and why that looks to be changing.

Osquery offers introspection capabilities for macOS that were previously difficult to achieve. Osquery uses a universal agent to collect and return a nearly unlimited amount of endpoint data that can then be queried like a database using SQL. For macOS system administrators, this opens up a world of quickly accessible system monitoring capabilities that we'll explore here today.    

In this post and video (click here to skip ahead to the video), we'll review some of the basic tasks for macOS system monitoring with osquery (osquery can be used for Linux and Windows as well, but because macOS was previously so underserved, I'm focusing there. Most commands we'll review will be the same or similar for other systems).

What we'll cover: 

• Inventory Review
• Hard Disk Storage Remaining
• Disc Encryption Validation
• Processes and CPU
• Active Logins
• Vulnerability Check/ Installed Software Versions

The first week of February 2018 has seen another piece of macOS malware —  CreativeUpdater malware. This time a cryptominer masquerading as several different software packages on the MacUpdate.com website. Again, even a few days later, a lot of endpoint solutions are not necessarily picking this up, looking at VirusTotal.

Seeing on Twitter that Patrick Wardle (a must follow for macOS security!) may have found his first piece of macOS malware for 2018, I eagerly flipped to his blog. Given that this is “new” malware on macOS, there is likely going to be a window between discovery and protection via A/V software.