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Malware dubbed “FruitFly” has been infecting hundreds of Mac computers for the last five or ten years and nobody knew about it until Malwarebytes documented the initial strain this January. While simplistic, it has the potential to monitor victims through their webcams, capture their screens, and log keystrokes. An ex-NSA hacker recently discovered a second strain, yet it remains a mystery how Macs were infected with it.
Despite targeting regular people, it doesn't seem to be made by people specifically interested in extorting victims with ransomware or stealing their credit cards and passwords. Wardle said that both versions of FruitFly seemed to be made mostly for surveillance. But FruitFly2they had unusual capabilities such as being able to move the mouse cursor and control the keyboard remotely, and it was programmed to alert the hackers when the computer's owner returns to control it, according to Wardle. It was also written in Perl, a language that's "archaic" for malware and used old code, Wardle said.
Despite targeting regular people, it doesn't seem to be made by people specifically interested in extorting victims with ransomware or stealing their credit cards and passwords. Wardle said that both versions of FruitFly seemed to be made mostly for surveillance. But FruitFly2they had unusual capabilities such as being able to move the mouse cursor and control the keyboard remotely, and it was programmed to alert the hackers when the computer's owner returns to control it, according to Wardle. It was also written in Perl, a language that's "archaic" for malware and used old code, Wardle said.