Recently, there was a lot of talk during the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June about how Apple will equip its products with artificial intelligence (AI). But there’s another way the company can put AI to good use: it can protect your Mac against malware and other digital nasties.
As noted by macOS developer and blogger Howard OakleyApple just updated its XProtect anti-malware system with 74 new rules that specifically target the Adload adware virus, which hijacks your browser and forces you to visit malicious sites. XProtect is a built-in macOS feature that detects malicious code in third-party apps and prevents them from running. An update of its definitions is not particularly unusual.
But what’s unusual is the sheer size of the XProtect update. As Oakley puts it, “Developing so many definitions by hand would normally take a lot of time and effort.” And that raises an interesting question: Does Apple use AI to write its antivirus definitions?
Oakley certainly thinks this is a possibility. In the blog post, he suggests it could be a potential solution to a problem like Adload, which is regularly updated to evade detection, forcing companies like Apple to respond quickly. If Apple uses AI to do the heavy lifting, it could “overwhelm Adload’s efforts to evade detection until the malware is extensively rewritten,” Oakley says.
AI vs malware
There has been much discussion about what the rapid development of generative AI tools like ChatGPT will mean for malware creators and those fighting them. For some, it could help bad actors produce viruses and Trojans more quickly. For others, it is an excellent tool for reverse engineering malware and building better defenses against it.
I spoke last year a range of cybersecurity experts about this subject. Joshua Long, chief security analyst at antivirus company Intego, suggested that AI could help detect zero-day errors by analyzing code uploaded into the chat window. And Martin Zugec, Technical Solutions Director at Bitdefender, noted: “The majority of novice malware writers likely do not have the skills needed to bypass security measures (ChatGPT), and therefore the risk from chatbot-generated malware in this area remains moment relatively low. time.”
Be that as it may, it would be surprising if Apple didn’t at least explore using AI to help write its antivirus definitions. Malware threats are constantly evolving, which means defenders must adapt as quickly as possible to keep them out. With the speed that AI enables, it could become an invaluable tool in the antivirus arsenal.
Interestingly, Oakley notes that there are already several AI tools that can write antivirus definitions, but “but Apple doesn’t seem to have made much use of them in the past, at least not on this unprecedented scale.” Given the Adload example, we could soon see AI playing a much more active role in keeping your Mac safe.