VBA Stomping
Parent: T1564
Description
Adversaries may hide malicious Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) payloads embedded within MS Office documents by replacing the VBA source code with benign data.(Citation: FireEye VBA stomp Feb 2020) MS Office documents with embedded VBA content store source code inside of module streams. Each module stream has a <code>PerformanceCache</code> that stores a separate compiled version of the VBA source code known as p-code. The p-code is executed when the MS Office version specified in the <code>_VBA_PROJECT</code> stream (which contains the version-dependent description of the VBA project) matches the version of the host MS Office application.(Citation: Evil Clippy May 2019)(Citation: Microsoft _VBA_PROJECT Stream) An adversary may hide malicious VBA code by overwriting the VBA source code location with zero’s, benign code, or random bytes while leaving the previously compiled malicious p-code. Tools that scan for malicious VBA source code may be bypassed as the unwanted code is hidden in the compiled p-code. If the VBA source code is removed, some tools might even think that there are no macros present. If there is a version match between the <code>_VBA_PROJECT</code> stream and host MS Office application, the p-code will be executed, otherwise the benign VBA source code will be decompressed and recompiled to p-code, thus removing malicious p-code and potentially bypassing dynamic analysis.(Citation: Walmart Roberts Oct 2018)(Citation: FireEye VBA stomp Feb 2020)(Citation: pcodedmp Bontchev)
Mapped SPARTA techniques
No techniques mapped to this control.
Cross-framework references
Relationships published by the source frameworks themselves, reproduced here with attribution. They are not SafeMode Space mappings and carry no confidence rating of ours.
Countered by 14 in MITRE D3FEND (Defensive Techniques)
- D3-CFContent Filtering
- D3-CMContent Modification
- D3-CQContent Quarantine
- D3-DADynamic Analysis
- D3-DFDecoy File
- D3-DIData Inventory
- D3-EFAEmulated File Analysis
- D3-FAFile Analysis
- D3-FEFile Encryption
- D3-FEVFile Eviction
- D3-FIMFile Integrity Monitoring
- D3-LFPLocal File Permissions
- D3-RFRestore File
- D3-RFAMRemote File Access Mediation
Cite as SafeMode Space, mitre-attack-enterprise T1564.007.