Security researchers have discovered a previously undetected piece of malware affecting Mac users around the world, including the new M1-powered Macs.

Red Canary researchers say that this “Silver Sparrow” malware forces infected Macs to check a control sever once per hour, but the actual threat remains a mystery.

“The lack of a final payload suggests that the malware may spring into action once an unknown condition is met,” the repot explains.

The Silver Sparrow malware also runs natively on Apple’s M1 chip.

This makes it the second piece of malware discovered that is optimized for Apple Silicon, with the first coming earlier this week.

Optimization for the M1 chip combined with things like the infection rate and maturity is what worries Red Canary researchers:.

“Though we haven’t observed Silver Sparrow delivering additional malicious payloads yet, its forward-looking M1 chip compatibility, global reach, relatively high infection rate, and operational maturity suggest Silver Sparrow is a reasonably serious threat, uniquely positioned to deliver a potentially impactful payload at a moment’s notice.