Jamf exec: The exploit isn’t what gives attackers away

Jamf this week unveiled Beacon, a threat-hunting service that aims to provide dedicated, proactive detection and analysis of Mac threats. The new security tool relies on Jamf’s Mac telemetry, which equips Jamf Threat Labs with the kind of deep visibility it needs to hunt for Apple-specific attacks, anomalous activity and suspicious behaviors. 

Security is always a major issue, but the threat environment is only becoming more complex, with AI adding a whole new set of dangers to fear. The unique nature of the Mac creates a paradox: while more employees want to use Macs, organizations sometimes lack the relevant internal expertise to support and secure them. Even with the correct endpoint security tools and policies in place, blue teaming can be under-resourced. As a result, organizations struggle to start, scale, repeat, and measure effective Mac threat-hunting programs.

Even the smallest business needs security protection at quite a high level — but who can afford a whole threat detection and remediation team?

With that in mind, Jaron Bradley, director of Jamf Threat Labs, offered more details about the company’s newly-introduced security service and broader security issues affecting Mac fleets in the business world.

AI is boosting attackers, what is the current environment, and why is awareness becoming more essential? “AI is primarily changing the speed at which attackers operate. We’re seeing this across the board: malicious websites go live faster, malware gets built faster, and malware adapts faster once it’s detected in the wild. That said, AI isn’t only benefiting attackers; defenders have gained just as many new capabilities from it. The bigger question is who can use it better.

“AI has effectively lowered the skill floor, so someone who would have once been dismissed as a ‘script kiddie’ can now build functional malware or ransomware with far less expertise than before. That’s why awareness matters more now: the pool of capable attackers is growing even faster.”

Is perimeter security a realistic ambition anymore? “This may depend on the company and its office requirements, but many would argue that security shifted from the perimeter to the endpoint long ago. That doesn’t mean perimeter security is dead; it simply means it’s one layer in a broader defense strategy. Many security analysts have found detection and analysis of novel threats to be more achievable at the endpoint level.”

If AI identifies a vulnerability and moves to exploit it, how likely is Beacon to identify the attack taking place? “AI has certainly changed the threat landscape, especially around vulnerability discovery and exploit development. The good news for expert threat hunting is that this doesn’t have a large effect on our ability to detect attacks.

“Zero-days have always existed, and while AI raises the stakes by accelerating how quickly they’re found and weaponized, it’s usually the activity attackers perform after using an exploit, not the exploit itself, that gives them away. No defense is ever truly complete, so the real differentiator has always been how fast and how well you notice when something’s wrong. That’s exactly where Beacon is built to add value: expert knowledge of what this malicious activity looks like in the Apple environment.”

Q: What sort of threats are you seeing right now? “Infostealer malware remains the single biggest threat to macOS right now. These stealers trick users into running them through convincing fake websites and social engineering, then exfiltrate as many credentials and secrets as possible for the attacker to use, sell, or trade on the dark web. 

“Apple regularly ships new protections, and attackers just as regularly adapt their social engineering to stay ahead of them. Techniques like ClickFix, where users are tricked into pasting and running malicious commands themselves, have become especially effective because they bypass many protections entirely by getting the user to do the work. Beyond that, supply chain attacks are growing at an alarming rate, with attackers compromising developer libraries that get pulled into internal or production projects, quietly introducing backdoors without the creator’s knowledge.”

Q: What about the manufacturing sector? Is there any excuse to use legacy kit at all in an AI threat age? “AI generated threats won’t necessarily be different than traditional ones, but they will stress the seams of traditional security programs that will need to have improved visibility at scale and be able to work at a new kind of speed and agility from start to finish.”

Q: Should IT delay security releases at all anymore? “It’s difficult to find a one-size-fits-all answer here. Delaying a release makes sense when the risk of shipping outweighs the cost of waiting, and that calculation looks very different for a hospital system than it does for a consumer app. The more meaningful shift in recent years isn’t about delaying more or less; it’s about catching problems earlier, so delaying becomes the exception rather than the standard. Both rushing and waiting carry real risks, so the decision should weigh multiple factors, particularly when security updates are on the line.”

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