1 Infection Vectors

A malware’s infection vector is the means by which it gains access to a system. Throughout the years, malware authors have relied on mechanisms ranging from simple social engineering tricks to advanced, remote zero-day exploits to infect Macs. In this chapter, we’ll discuss many of the most common techniques used by Mac malware authors.

By far the most popular method of infecting Macs with malicious code involves tricking users into infecting themselves, generally by directly downloading and running the malicious code. (By contrast, techniques like remote exploitation are far less prevalent.) To achieve this, attackers ...

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