Kasperky Lab: Shlayer Trojan a common threat on macOS

For close to two years now, the Shlayer Trojan has been the most common threat on the macOS platform: in 2019, one in 10 of its Ma security solutions encountered this malware at least once, according to Kasperky Lab. It accounts for almost 30% of all detections for this operating system, adds researchers at the security company.

“Having studied the Shlayer family, we can conclude that the macOS platform is a good source of revenue for cybercriminals,” says Kaspersky Lab. “The Trojan links even reside on legitimate resources — attackers are adept in the art of social engineering, and it is hard to predict how sophisticated the next deception technique will be.”

Shlayer is adelivery mechanism for a several malware payloads. It doesn’t harm the Mac itself, but summons other malicious code, such as adware. 

Typically links take users to ad pages that try to convince you to download software. According to Kaspersky, a common method is to display faked messages about Adobe Flash being out of date. So be very careful about what software you download.