In September 2014, we wrote about a resurgence in VBA malware.
VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications: it is a powerful and very widely-used programming tool that can be used right inside applications such as Microsoft Office.
That makes it common, and indeed perfectly usual, in legitimate files.
But, as we we wrote last time:
Visual Basic code is easy to write, flexible and easy to refactor. Similar functionality can often be expressed in many different ways which gives malware authors more options for producing distinct, workable versions of their software than they have with exploits.In short, what is good for the gander is equally good for the goose.
Indeed, over the past six months, malware that arrives as a VBA program inside an innocent-looking document has become an all-too-common occurrence in the threat landscape, and an essential weapon in spam campaigns.
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