- Apple / Mac Security Updates – In addition to the usual suspects, significant security updates have been released by Apple for multiple products including iOS / iPadOS 17.7, iOS / iPadOS 18, MacOS 13.7, 14.7 and 15, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, visionOS 2 and more. Additional info is available from CISA here. Basically, if you’ve got an Apple device, update it 🙂
- Microsoft Recall – The short version is that Microsoft Recall is apparently not as dead as we thought (hoped) that it was and I’ve not seen anyone state this better than Brian Krebs here. “…But last week, the software giant clarified that what it really meant was that the ability to disable Recall was a bug/feature in the preview version of Copilot+ that will not be available to Windows customers going forward…”. Additional info and commentary from the article is available here.
- Project Lazarus – I’m excited to announce that the first versions of the Project Lazarus USB drives have been sent out to a small group of MyIT clients for testing both for functionality (do they work) and feasibility (is this something that would actually help in a scenario similar to what we saw with Crowdstrike). Additional information on our Project Lazarus is available here.
- Client Forms – In an effort to make requesting support easier for common tasks (onboarding and offboarding users, for example), we are launching a number of forms that clients can use to request support. Links to the forms are located at the top of our website under Client Forms.
- Election Year Antics – In the US, this year is an election year and it’s safe to assume that criminals will leverage election related topics in their pretexting for attacks (phishing, vishing, smishing, all of the ishings), so be sure to consider that when planning your security awareness training.
Updates
The September 2024 Patch Tuesday from Microsoft included patches for at least 79 security vulnerabilities, including several that address vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited and one particularly interesting one ( CVE-2024-43491) that I believe was the bug highlighted in a talk at Black Hat recently giving threat actors the ability to roll back previously applied updates without updating the build number (effectively, leaving them secretly vulnerable, if you will).
Microsoft releases regular updates the second Tuesday of each month, often referred to as ‘Patch Tuesday’. These updates are categorized as Low, Moderate, Important or Critical. Details on the categories are available here. The updates can include any supported Microsoft product from Windows to Office to Internet Explorer and server products like Exchange and SQL Server. If you have one or more of these products installed, especially if the update is listed as Important or Critical, it’s important that the updates are installed.
Additional details on this months Microsoft updates are available from Krebs on Security, SANS Internet Storm Center and the Patch Tuesday Dashboard.
Adobe has published eight security bulletins for this month in a number of products including Media Encoder, Audition, After Effects, Premier Pro, Illustrator, Reader, Cold Fusion and Photoshop. We recommend keeping your Acrobat or Reader software up to date, you should be able to check/install updates by going to the “Help” tab, then “Check for updates”.
Like Microsoft, Adobe now releases updates to their products on the second Tuesday of each month. Adobe will also release ‘out of band’ updates if necessary to address critical vulnerabilities in their products. Adobe products include Adobe Reader (for viewing PDF files), Adobe Flash Player (often used to watch videos, for interactive content like games, etc.), Adobe Shockwave and the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Lightroom, etc
Additional details are available from Adobe Here including links to download the update(s) and instructions for installation.
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Article Submitted by Nathan J. Underwood, CEH