OSX.Bella: Mac Malware Strikes Again

On Friday, a sophisticated Mac Trojan was discovered called OSX.Dok, which installs malware designed to intercept all HTTP and HTTPS traffic. This morning, Adam Thomas, a Malwarebytes researcher, found a variant of the OSX.Dok dropper that behaves altogether differently and installs a completely different payload.

Distribution Method
This variant has the same form as the dropper for OSX.Dok – a zipped app named Dokument.app, masquerading as a document. It is signed with the same (now revoked) certificate as the previous OSX.Dok dropper and it was first uploaded to VirusTotal around the same time.

OSX.Dok.B SHA-256:
54ee71f6ad1f91a6f162bd5712d1a2e3d3111c352a0f52db630dcb4638101938

As with the previous variant, this one also copies itself to /Users/Shared/AppStore.app, and displays the same alert claiming that the app is damaged. However, this variant never displays the fake “OS X Updates Available” window, covering the entire screen. After a minute or so, it simply closes and deletes itself.

Instead of installing OSX.Dok, this dropper installs an open-source backdoor named Bella, created by someone who identifies himself on GitHub only as “Noah.”

Behavior Analysis
Noah has been creating Python scripts to attack various macOS data, such as stealing iCloud authorization tokens, or password and credit card information from Chrome. In February of this year, he released Bella, which combines functionality from previous scripts with new functionality:

Bella even includes the capability to escalate to root privileges via vulnerabilities in the system (which only work on macOS 10.12.1 and earlier), or phishing to obtain an admin user password. Some of the above capabilities rely on gaining root privileges, while others do not.

Bella can be customized in some aspects. This copy uses the following command server:

host = '185.68.93.74' #Command and Control IP (listener will run on)
port = 4545 #What port Bella will operate over

This address is owned by a hosting company located in Moscow, Russia.

The malware has also been set to install the script, database, and launch agent files in the following locations:

~/Library/Containers/.bella/Bella
~/Library/Containers/.bella/bella.db
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.iTunes.plist

If root access can be achieved, it will instead be placed in the corresponding locations in the root library folder, rather than the user’s library folder.

Conclusion
Although this particular delivery app is dead at this point, Bella is open-source and surprisingly powerful for a Python script. It’s quite likely that it will be dropped by other malicious installers in the future.

Malwarebytes for Mac detects this malware as OSX.Bella. If you’ve been infected with this malware, after removing it, be sure to change all your passwords as well. Business users should be aware that this malware could exfiltrate a large amount of company data, including passwords, code signing certificates, hardware locations and much more. If you’ve been infected, contact your IT department.

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OSX.Dok: New & Sophisticated Mac Malware Strikes