Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) has developed a lightweight method to detect indicators of infection from sophisticated iOS spyware such as Pegasus, Reign, and Predator through analyzing Shutdown.log, a previously unexplored forensic artifact.
Kaspersky researchers have revealed a new lightweight method to detect sophisticated iOS spyware such as Pegasus, new Pegasus-like threats Reign and Predator and created a self-check tool for users. The company’s experts discovered Pegasus infections leave traces in the unexpected system log, Shutdown.log, stored within any mobile iOS device’s sysdiagnose archive. This archive retains information from each reboot session, meaning anomalies associated with the Pegasus malware become apparent in the log if an infected user reboots their device. Among those identified were instances of ”sticky“ processes impeding reboots, particularly those linked to Pegasus, along with infection traces discovered through cybersecurity community observations.
“The sysdiag dump analysis proves to be minimally intrusive and resource-light, relying on system-based artifacts to identify potential iPhone infections. Having received the infection indicator in this log and confirmed the infection using Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT’s) processing of other iOS artifacts, this log now becomes part of a holistic approach to investigating iOS malware infection. Since we confirmed the consistency of this behavior with the other Pegasus infections we analyzed, we believe it will serve as a reliable forensic artifact to support infection analysis,” comments Maher Yamout, Lead Security Researcher, Kaspersky’s GReAT.
Analyzing the Shutdown.log in Pegasus infections, Kaspersky experts observed a common infection path, specifically “/private/var/db/”, mirroring paths seen in infections caused by other iOS malware like Reign and Predator. The company’s researchers suggest this log file holds potential for identifying infections related to these malware families. To ease the search for spyware infections, Kaspersky experts developed a self-check utility for users. The Python3 scripts facilitate the extraction, analysis, and parsing of the Shutdown.log artifact.
