Microsoft Office is no stranger to vulnerabilities and exploits. Most of those vulnerabilities led from Microsoft Office to Microsoft Windows, but it's possible for an attacker to take an exploit path from Microsoft Office to macOS — a path that Patrick Wardle, principal security researcher at Jamf, discussed in his presentation on Wednesday at Black Hat USA.
Wardle began by pointing out that macros — executable code inserted into documents — have been exploited as attack vectors since at least 1999. In the last three or four years, Wardle said, more of these exploits have been aimed at macOS targets as Macs have become more attractive targets because of their increased use in business environments.
The Human Side In most of the macro-based attacks, human intervention on the part of the victim is required at least once, and usually twice, Wardle said. First, the victim must click on an email attachment or malicious link in order to download and open the infected document. Next, in most cases macros will not run on a system by default — they must be given explicit permission to run by the user.
Most macro-based attacks have two stages, Wardle explained. In the first — the stage given explicit permission to run by the victim — code executes that checks the system status, checks for the presence of anti-malware software, and then downloads the second stage. It's the second stage payload that contains the "working" code of the attack, whether it's skimming credentials, creating a bot, or encrypting the system's data as part of a ransomware scheme.
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