Adversaries may abuse Visual Basic (VB) for execution. VB is a programming language created by Microsoft with interoperability with many Windows technologies such as Component Object Model and the Native API through the Windows API. Although tagged as legacy with no planned future evolutions, VB is integrated and supported in the .NET Framework and cross-platform .NET Core.^[1],[2]

Derivative languages based on VB have also been created, such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and VBScript. VBA is an event-driven programming language built into Microsoft Office, as well as several third-party applications.^[3],[4] VBA enables documents to contain macros used to automate the execution of tasks and other functionality on the host. VBScript is a default scripting language on Windows hosts and can also be used in place of JavaScript on HTML Application (HTA) webpages served to Internet Explorer (though most modern browsers do not come with VBScript support).^[5]

Adversaries may use VB payloads to execute malicious commands. Common malicious usage includes automating execution of behaviors with VBScript or embedding VBA content into Spearphishing Attachment payloads (which may also involve Mark-of-the-Web Bypass to enable execution).^[6]

References

1. .NET Team. (2020, March 11). Visual Basic support planned for .NET 5.0. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
2. Microsoft. (n.d.). Visual Basic documentation. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
3. Microsoft. (2019, June 11). Office VBA Reference. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
4. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Visual Basic for Applications. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
5. Microsoft. (2011, April 19). What Is VBScript?. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
6. Kellie Eickmeyer. (2022, February 7). Helping users stay safe: Blocking internet macros by default in Office. Retrieved February 7, 2022.

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