A few weeks ago, Microsoft officially announced it was developing a new version of its Teams desktop app. The new version of its online meeting and collaboration tool is supposed to be more efficient and simpler to use. Today, the company revealed some of the security improvements it is putting into the new Teams app.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that the new Teams app will use MSIX packages and App Installer for deployment, instead of using a custom-developed installer and updater. This change "reduces risk surface and maintenance cost" according to the company. It added:
We are also moving away from installing Teams in the user profile. While installing in the user profile is convenient and does not require elevated privileges, it also makes common post-exploitation activities, such as maintaining persistence, easier. The new Teams relies on App Installer for installations and will install in a privileged location, where non-administrator users cannot tamper with its executable files.
The new Teams app will also switch from the old Electron executable to the more recent Edge WebView2 runtime, which will allow for faster updates of the app. Also, this will allow the Teams app to take up much less space, as it will be less than 12MB, compared to the 134MB in the current Teams app. The public preview of the new Teams app is now available for Windows users, and it will expand to Mac users, and later for full general availability, sometime in late 2023.
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