Security News > 2023 > February > Pirated Final Cut Pro infects your Mac with cryptomining malware
Security researchers discovered a cryptomining operation targeting macOS with a malicious version of Final Cut Pro that remains largely undetected by antivirus engines.
From the first generation, the malware used an i2p network layer for command and control communications to anonymize traffic.
The second generation of the malware appeared relatively briefly between April 2021 and October 2021, featuring base 64 encoding for executables hidden in the app bundle.
Ventura and the road ahead. The latest version of macOS, codenamed "Ventura," introduces more stringent code-signing checks that threaten to make hiding and launching malware from inside user-launched apps, especially pirated ones, ineffective.
In this case, the pirates modified Final Cut Pro only partially, keeping the original code-signing certificate intact.
In conclusion, the recommendation is to avoid downloading pirated software from peer-to-peer networks, as these are almost always ridden with malware or adware.