Enable this New Setting to Secure your Computer from Macro-based Malware

Do you deal with MS Word files on the daily basis?

If yes, then are you aware that even opening a simple doc file could compromise your system?

It is a matter to think that the virus does not directly affect you, but it is you who let the virus carry out the attack by enabling deadly "Macros" to view the doc contents that are generally on eye-catching subjects like bank invoice.

How Macros are Crippling your System?

The concept of Macros dates back to 1990s. You must be familiar with this message: "Warning: This document contains macros."

A Macro is a series of commands and actions that help to automate some tasks. Microsoft Office programs support Macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), but they can also be used for malicious activities like installing malware.

Hackers are cleverly using this technique on the shade of social engineering by sending the malicious Macros through doc file or spreadsheet with an eye-catching subject in the mail to the corporate networks.

Once a user opens the malicious Word document, the doc file gets downloaded to its system. However, danger comes in when the user opens the file, and a popup window appears that states "Enable Editing" to view the content.

Once the users click Enable Editing, the malicious file then begins to perform the notorious activities in the system such as to get embedded into other doc files to proliferate the attacking rate that results in crippling your system network.

All those actions would depend upon payload program defines inside the Macro.

Dridex and Locky are Warning Bells!!!

No other incidents could get you the clear picture on the potential threat of Macro viruses apart from Dridex Malware and Locky Ransomware. Both malware had made use of the malicious Macros to hijack systems.

Over 20 Million Euro had been stolen from the UK banks with the Dridex Malware, which got triggered via a nasty macro virus. The infectious bar of Locky ransomware had also seen an exponential growth in a couple of hours.

How to Protect Yourself from Macro-based Malware?

Step 1: Configure Trusted Location

Since disabling Macros is not a feasible option, especially in an office environment where Macros are designed to simplify the complex task with automation.

So, if your organization relies on Macros, you can move files that use Macros into the company’s DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), also called Trusted Location.

To configure the trusted location, you can navigate via:

User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Microsoft Office XXX 20XX/Application Settings/Security/Trust Center/Trusted Locations

Once configured, the Macros that does not belong to the trusted location would not run in any way, beefing up your system’s security.

Step 2: Block Macros in Office Files that came from the Internet

Microsoft had recently unveiled a novel method by implementing a new tactical security feature to limit the Macro execution attack in MS Office 2016, ultimately preventing your system from hijacking.

The new feature is a group policy setting that lets enterprise administrators to disable macros from running in Office files that come from the Internet.

The new setting is called, "Block macros from running in Office files from the Internet" and can be navigated through the group policy management editor under:

User configuration > Administrative templates > Microsoft Word 2016 > Word Options > Security > Trust Center

It can be configured for each Office application.

By enabling this option, macros that come from the Internet are blocked from running even if you have 'enable all macros' in the Macros Settings.

Moreover, instead of having the option to 'Enable Editing,' you'll receive a notification that macros are blocked from running, as the document comes from an Untrusted Source.

The only way to run that particular Office file is to save it to a trusted location, allowing macros to run.

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A critical zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in all versions of Apple's OS X operating system that allows hackers to exploit the company’s newest protection feature and steal sensitive data from affected devices.

With the release of OS X El Capitan, Apple introduced a security protection feature to the OS X kernel called System Integrity Protection (SIP). The feature is designed to prevent potentially malicious or bad software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.

The purpose of SIP is to restrict the root account of OS X devices and limit the actions a root user can perform on protected parts of the system in an effort to reduce the chance of malicious code hijacking a device or performing privilege escalation.

However, SentinelOne security researcher Pedro Vilaça has uncovered a critical vulnerability in both OS X and iOS that allows for local privilege escalation as well as bypasses SIP without kernel exploit, impacting all versions to date.

Bypass SIP to Protect Malware

The zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2016-1757) is a Non-Memory Corruption bug that allows hackers to execute arbitrary code on any targeted machine, perform remote code execution (RCE) or sandbox escapes, according to the researcher.

The attacker then escalates the malware's privileges to bypass SIP, alter system files, and then stay on the infected system.

"The same exploit allows someone to escalate privileges and also to bypass system integrity," the researcher explains in a blog post. "In this way, the same OS X security feature designed to protect users from malware can be used to achieve malware persistency."

By default, System Integrity Protection or SIP protects these folders: /System, /usr, /bin, /sbin, along with applications that come pre-installed with OS X.

Easy-to-Exploit and Tough to Detect-&-Remove

According to Vilaça, the zero-day vulnerability is easy to exploit, and a simple spear-phishing or browser-based attack would be more than enough to compromise the target machine.

"It is a logic-based vulnerability, extremely reliable and stable, and does not crash machines or processes," Vilaça says. "This kind of exploit could typically be used in highly targeted or state-sponsored attacks."

The most worrisome part is that the infection is difficult to detect, and even if users ever discover it, it would be impossible for them to remove the infection, since SIP would work against them, preventing users from reaching or altering the malware-laced system file.

Although the zero-day vulnerability was discovered in early 2015 and was reported to Apple in January this year, the good news is that the bug doesn't seem to have been used in the wild.

Apple has patched the vulnerability, but only in updates for El Capitan 10.11.4, and iOS 9.3 that were released on 21st March.

Other versions do not appear to have a patch update for this specific vulnerability from Apple, meaning they are left vulnerable to this specific zero-day bug.

Source : Click Here

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