A few days ago experts at antivirus firm ESET spotted a new MacOS ransomware , a rarity in the threat landscape , but it has a serious problem . Malware experts from antivirus vendor ESET have discovered a new file-encrypting ransomware , dubbed OSX/Filecoder.E , targeting MacOS that is being distributed through bittorrent websites. “ Early last week , we have seen a new ransomware campaign for Mac . This new ransomware , written in Swift , is distributed via BitTorrent distribution sites and calls itself “ Patcher ” , ostensibly an application for pirating popular software. ” reads the analysis published by ESET . The bad news for the victims is that they will not be able to recover their files , even if they pay the ransom Attack.Ransom . MacOS ransomware is not common in the threat landscape , this is the second such malware discovered by the security experts after the researchers spotted the Keranger threat in March 2016 . The OSX/Filecoder.E MacOS ransomware masquerades Attack.Phishing itself as a cracking tool for commercial software like Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Microsoft Office for Mac . The fake cracking tool is being distributed as a bittorrent download . The malware researchers noted that the ransomware is written in Apple ’ s Swift programming language and it appears to be the result of the work of a novice Vxer . The MacOS ransomware is hard to install on the last OS X and MacOS versions because the installer is not signed with a developer certificate issued by Apple . The OSX/Filecoder.E MacOS ransomware generates a single encryption key for all files and then stores the files in encrypted zip archives . Unfortunately , the malicious code is not able to send the encryption key to the C & C server before being destroyed , this makes impossible the file decryption . The experts highlighted that implementation of the encryption process is effective and makes impossible to crack it . “ There is one big problem with this ransomware : it doesn ’ t have any code to communicate with any C & C server . This means that there is no way the key that was used to encrypt the files can be sent to the malware operators. ” continues the analysis . “ The random ZIP password is generated with arc4random_uniform which is considered a secure random number generator , ” “ The key is also too long to brute force in a reasonable amount of time. ” At the time I was writing , the monitoring to the bitcoin wallet address used to receive the payment Attack.Ransom of the victims revealed that none has paid the ransom Attack.Ransom . Experts believe that the crooks behind OSX/Filecoder . E are likely interested in scamming the victims instead of managing a botnet . “ This new crypto-ransomware , designed specifically for macOS , is surely not a masterpiece . Unfortunately , it ’ s still effective enough to prevent the victims accessing their own files and could cause serious damage. ” closed the analysis .