Fake Homebrew Google Ads Push Malware Onto macOS

joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: A new malicious campaign is targeting macOS developers with fake Homebrew, LogMeIn, and TradingView platforms that deliver infostealing malware like AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer) and Odyssey. The campaign employs 'ClickFix' techniques where targets are tricked into executing commands in Terminal, infecting themselves with malware. Researchers at threat hunting company Hunt.io identified more than 85 domains impersonating the three platforms in this campaign.

When checking some of the domains, BleepingComputer discovered that in some cases the traffic to the sites was driven via Google Ads, indicating that the threat actor promoted them to appear in Google Search results. The malicious sites feature convincing download portals for the fake apps and instruct users to copy a curl command in their Terminal to install them, the researchers say. In other cases, like for TradingView, the malicious commands are presented as a 'connection security confirmation step.' However, if the user clicks on the 'copy' button, a base64-encoded installation command is delivered to the clipboard instead of the displayed Cloudflare verification ID.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.