New Security Tools Target Growing macOS Threats

Researchers built MALET, a dataset of ~71K Mach-O binaries (48,400 malicious, 22,907 benign), and Katalina, a high-performance static analysis tool, to characterize macOS malware. Their analysis found 96.1% of malicious samples were unsigned, identified DPRK-linked signed binaries (including revoked certs), and noted a rise in credential stealers that often evade AV and EDR, underscoring enforcement gaps in macOS code signing and the need for improved defender tooling.