Can you tell if your Mac computer is infested with malware from the CIA?

Question

On March 23rd 2017, news of the CIA having possibly infesting Mac computers with malware have been released by WikiLeaks.

"DarkSeaSkies" is "an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air computer" and consists of "DarkMatter", "SeaPea" and "NightSkies", respectively EFI, kernel-space and user-space implants.

Documents on the "Triton" MacOSX malware, its infector "Dark Mallet" and its EFI-persistent version "DerStake" are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.

Although these infections surely target very few people, there is still little to no documentation regarding this malware, but I am wondering if there is a way to inspect and diagnose this malware (either with "regular" malware troubleshooting software or through Activity Monitor, Terminal, etc).

Answer 1

Kaspery Lab posted a few Yara rules for specific malware.

rule apt_equation_exploitlib_mutexes { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect Equation group's Exploitation library” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$mz=“MZ”
$a1=“prkMtx” wide $a2=“cnFormSyncExFBC” wide $a3=“cnFormVoidFBC” wide $a4=“cnFormSyncExFBC” $a5=“cnFormVoidFBC”
condition:
(($mz at 0) and any of ($a*)) }


rule apt_equation_doublefantasy_genericresource { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect DoubleFantasy encoded con g” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$mz=“MZ”
$a1={06 00 42 00 49 00 4E 00 52 00 45 00 53 00} $a2=“yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”
$a3=“002”
condition:
(($mz at 0) and all of ($a*)) and  lesize < 500000 }


rule apt_equation_equationlaser_runtimeclasses { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect the EquationLaser malware” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings: $a1=“?a73957838_2@@YAXXZ” $a2=“?a84884@@YAXXZ” $a3=“?b823838_9839@@YAXXZ” $a4=“?e747383_94@@YAXXZ” $a5=“?e83834@@YAXXZ” $a6=“?e929348_827@@YAXXZ”
condition: any of them
}

rule apt_equation_cryptotable { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect the crypto library used in Equation group malware”
version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$a={37 DF E8 B6 C7 9C 0B AE 91 EF F0 3B 90 C6 80 85 5D 19 4B 45 44 12 3C E2 0D 5C 1C 7B C4 FF D6 05 17 14 4F 03 74 1E 41 DA 8F 7D DE 7E 99 F1 35 AC B8 46 93 CE 23 82 07 EB 2B D4 72 71 40 F3 B0 F7 78 D7 4C D1 55 1A 39 83 18 FA E1 9A 56 B1 96 AB A6 30 C5 5F BE 0C 50 C1}
condition: $a
}