A new campaign delivering the Atomic Stealer malware to macOS users abuses the Script Editor in a variation of the ClickFix attack that tricked users into executing commands in Terminal.
Script Editor is a built-in macOS application for writing and running scripts, primarily AppleScript and JXA, that can execute local scripts and shell commands. It is a trusted application pre-installed on macOS systems.
While this is not the first time it has been abused for malware delivery, the researchers note that, in the context of the ClickFix social engineering technique, it does not require the victim to manually interact with the Terminal and execute commands.
Apart from the Terminal-based variant being widely reported, macOS Tahoe 26.4 added protection against ClickFix attacks in the form of a warning when trying to execute commands.
In a new campaign distributing Atomic Stealer observed by security researchers at Jamf, the hackers target victims with fake Apple-themed sites that pose as guides to help reclaim disk space on their Mac computers.
These pages contain legitimate-looking system cleanup instructions but use the applescript:// URL scheme to launch Script Editor with a pre-filled executable code.
Source: Jamf
The malicious code runs an obfuscated ‘curl | zsh’ command, which downloads and executes a script directly in system memory.
This decodes a base64 + gzip payload, downloads a binary (/tmp/helper), removes security attributes via ‘xattr -c,’ makes it executable, and runs it.
The final payload is a Mach-O binary identified as Atomic Stealer (AMOS), a commodity malware-as-a-service that has been extensively deployed in ClickFix campaigns using various lures over the past year.
The malware targets a broad spectrum of sensitive data, including information stored in the Keychain, desktop, and browser cryptocurrency wallet extensions, browser autofill data, passwords, cookies, stored credit cards, and system information.
Last year, AMOS also added a backdoor component to give operators persistent access to compromised systems.
Mac users should treat Script Editor prompts as high-risk and avoid running them on their devices unless they fully understand what they do and trust the resource.
For macOS troubleshooting guides, it is recommended to rely only on official documentation from Apple.
Apple Support Communities, the forum where Apple customers can help each other with advice, although it may not be risk-free.
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