In early 2020, analysts at Malwarebytes reported a dramatic spike in the distribution of Mac threats. The security firm’s solutions had detected a fourfold year-over-year increase in malicious apps tailor-made to run on macOS machines. Back then, these unsetting statistics eclipsed the state of things in the Windows threat ecosystem, but there was an important nuance worth emphasizing.

There are numerous facets and shades of Mac adware. Some of these junk apps fully live up to their categorization, displaying ads on most web pages the victim visits. Others use a different tactic that involves an unauthorized overhaul of one’s browser settings to reroute the traffic. The Bing redirect virus targeting Mac, as the name suggests, falls under the latter cluster.

Any web browser is intended to be an ultimately user-friendly tool where the whole customization and features are at one’s fingertips. Ideally, things are just as smooth as that and don’t deviate from the norm unless a piece of malware interferes with a victim’s web experience. Such a disruption occurs when the Search Baron virus infects a Mac and iteratively redirects the browser to bing.com without asking for the admin’s consent.

The “nobleman” theme continues to be the trend in the cybercrime ecosystem that exploits Mac computers via a massive web traffic redistribution scheme. The Search Baron browser hijacker, which splashed onto the scene in July 2019, has been superseded by Search Marquis culprit. Both act in a similar fashion, forwarding the victims to Bing in the long run. Here’s a full security report on this brand new infection.

Analysts at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne have recently shed light on a long-running macOS cryptomining malware strain codenamed OSAMiner. These would have been garden-variety findings if it weren’t for the fact that the infection has been playing a hide-and-seek game with researchers since around 2015. Its uniqueness stems from the use of what’s called run-only AppleScript files to download and execute the dodgy components.