macOS Version of HZ RAT Backdoor Targets Chinese Messaging App Users

From thehackernews.com

Users of Chinese instant messaging apps like DingTalk and WeChat are the target of an Apple macOS version of a backdoor named HZ RAT.

The artifacts “almost exactly replicate the functionality of the Windows version of the backdoor and differ only in the payload, which is received in the form of shell scripts from the attackers’ server,” Kaspersky researcher Sergey Puzan said.

HZ RAT was first documented by German cybersecurity company DCSO in November 2022, with the malware distributed via self-extracting zip archives or malicious RTF documents presumably built using the Royal Road RTF weaponizer.

The attack chains involving RTF documents are engineered to deploy the Windows version of the malware that’s executed on the compromised host by exploiting a years-old Microsoft Office flaw in the Equation Editor (CVE-2017-11882).

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