iPhone Lockdown mode || MS allows untrusted macros again
CyberInsights #52
Pegasus - a software by the NSO group of Israel, was in the limelight some time back with the investigative report by a group of 16 media companies for selling hard to detect spyware with multiple zero days. Many governments have allegedly used it, not just for national security, but for quelling dissent.
Apple calls Pegasus and other software like this as mercenary spyware. In its next release it will come up with a special ‘lockdown mode’ for its iOS. It will be for a select group of people who are a subject of extreme risk like mercenary spyware.
It’s interesting to see how big tech is dealing with this super quiet and hard to detect spyware that believes is identifying and using multiple zero days. I foresee an interesting battle on this soon.
Take Action:
If any of your organisation team members figure in this ‘high risk’ group, make them aware of this option and setup IT teams to assist in the training and deployment of the Lockdown mode when it releases.
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Microsoft re-allows untrusted macros
If you use macros regularly, you would have seen this transition. In February, Microsoft disabled macros downloaded from the internet by default. Good news.
But this month, they reversed it and allowed untrusted macros to run by default. Why? User feedback, they said. Which users? We don’t know. We have some internet memes on it already…
This setting, Microsoft says, is temporary. They promise to change it again soon.
However, you can change the setting back to what it was by making changes to the group policy.
Take Action:
If your threat model includes a threat from MS Office macros (and it better 🤨), then go through this documentation and disable untrusted macros by default.
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