Cybersecurity group Cisco Talos is warning Apple users to take action after it identified eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft applications for macOS operating systems.
The apps in question are Outlook, three versions of Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and OneNote.
Talos warned that hackers could inject "malicious libraries into Microsoft's applications to gain their entitlements and user-granted permissions."
"We identified eight vulnerabilities in various Microsoft applications for macOS, through which an attacker could bypass the operating system's permission model by using existing app permissions without prompting the user for any additional verification," Cisco Talos wrote. "If successful, the adversary could gain any privileges already granted to the affected Microsoft applications.
"For example, the attacker could send emails from the user account without the user noticing, record audio clips, take pictures or record videos without any user interaction. Microsoft considers these issues low risk, and some of their applications, they claim, need to allow loading of unsigned libraries to support plugins and have declined to fix the issues," the firm added.
Cisco Talos advised macOS users to "sandbox" their apps.
"Sandboxing is designed to restrict access to resources and data; a sandboxed app can only access the resources it has explicitly requested through entitlements," the group said.
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Daily Mail that the surfaced cases "do not pose a significant security risk as the technique described requires the attacker to already have a certain level of access to the system."
"However, we have implemented several updated for added protection, as detailed in the report. As best practice, customers should keep their software updated and regularly review application permissions," Microsoft said.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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