Understanding and reversing a suspicious terminal command

echo is a command that simply prints a string of text in a Terminal window.

base64 is an encoding protocol. The -d flag tells it to decode the input text (in this case, that mess of letters and numbers input to the echo command).

bash is a type of shell the command is executed in. It interprets the other commands.

While it’s certainly conceivably possible, such persistence is much more expensive exploit tooling; if the folks have compromised some of the firmware, we all have bigger issues.

If this is Apple silicon Mac and you have another Apple silicon Mac, you can reload the firmware. Now that too won’t he absolutely certain, because, well, there is no certainty with security. It’s always trade-offs,

Gad-2 wrote:

I don't know if this clean install is stored on my Mac or is it pulled from the cloud.

If you "clean install" the MacOS using Apple's procedures, the installation is "safe."

i had an external SSD connected at that time so could that SSD be compromised too and i have to delete all the files there as well ? as i have some data there that doesn't have a backup.

I think you can assume any external drives were also accessed, but most likely to copy information from, not to place new files into. But I don't believe you need to delete all its files. If they are data (not apps or executables), I would not be as concerned. Sometimes .jpg or .pdf files can be vectors for malware but at some point we all accept some risk in life and I think that risk is very low in this situation. What I would do is manually copy the files you care about from that external drive to another drive, then erase/format the external drive and manually copy those files back. As an extra measure of paranoia, you could do this while disconnected from the internet.

Same issue here , got the cloud fare asking me to verify via terminal with a copy paste command.

When I pasted the command and pressed enter it asked me for my Mac password. I immediately understood that I made a mistake , so at that moment I just HARD SWITCH OFF my laptop by am not sure if it was compromised.

It would take me a few days to empty my Mac onto hard disk and make a fresh install of macOS. Is there a way to check if something was installed ? a way to check if it was compromised ?

I opened the laptop again, changed the user password on Apple account.

I will need to move all my data out before reinstalling macOS, however in the meantime I am not sure if my data is safe.

> When I pasted the command and pressed enter it asked me for my Mac password. I immediately understood that I made a mistake , so at that moment I just HARD SWITCH OFF my laptop by am not sure if it was compromised.

Not much could happen if you didn't enter your password. That's the last defense against anything malicious. Everything up to that point (copying the script, downloading files to your machine, etc.) is moot and irrelevant until you enter that password and then you've let them in and lost all control.

Was the site you were accessing the Ascent Gate online test prep platform, https://plainfenassociates.com/?

The Terminal command you pasted is a base64-encoded URL pointing to that domain.