Popular Microsoft apps for Mac at risk of code injection attacks | Computer Weekly
Summary
Several Microsoft applications designed specifically for the Apple macOS operating system are at risk of being subverted by malicious actors, according to research published by Cisco Talos. Talos researcher Francesco Benvenuto found eight vulnerabilities in widely used Microsoft properties including Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams and Word. Usually, operating systems base these policies on the principles of discretionary access control (DAC), but this provides very limited protection against vulnerable software or malware running with user or root privileges. Notarised apps – those that have been checked by Apple’s scanners for dodgy components – are also required to enable hardened runtime to make them more resistant to code injection. These apps, which include all the Microsoft ones in scope of the research, that may need to perform higher risk actions such as loading an untrusted library, must declare that intent through their entitlements.
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