How Hackers Turn Microsoft Excel's Own Features Against It

guest · Jun 27, 2019

How Hackers Turn Microsoft Excel's Own Features Against It
June 27, 2019
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-excel-hacking-power-query-macros/

You probably think of Microsoft's classic spreadsheet program Excel as mostly boring.
Like the rest of the Office 365 suite, attackers often manipulate Excel to launch their digital strikes. And two recent findings demonstrate how the program's own legitimate features can be used against it.

On Thursday, researchers from the threat intelligence firm Mimecast are disclosing findings that an Excel feature called Power Query can be manipulated to facilitate established Office 365 system attacks.

"Attackers don’t need to invest in a very sophisticated attack, they can just open up Microsoft Excel and use its own tools," says Meni Farjon, Mimecast's chief scientist. "And you have basically 100 percent reliability.
And while Mimecast hasn't seen any indication that Power Query is being manipulated for attacks in the wild yet, the researchers also point out that the attacks are difficult to detect, because they stem from a legitimate feature.
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guest · Jun 27, 2019

Technical details:
Mimecast: Exploit Using Microsoft Excel Power Query for Remote DDE Execution Discovered

Power Query [...] The feature gives such rich controls that it can be used to fingerprint a sandbox or a victim’s machine even before delivering any payloads. The attacker has potential pre-payload and pre-exploitation controls and could deliver a malicious payload to the victim while also making the file appear harmless to a sandbox or other security solutions.

We're providing a detailed walkthrough of a potential exploit using Power Query to launch a DDE exploit that could drop and execute a payload from a file sharing-site. [...]
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