Exploiting Office native functionality: Word DDE edition

Updated 20 October: Added a note regarding enabling full command line logging for process creation events; added a note clarifying that "Creator Process Name" is only recorded in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Older versions of Windows record the creator process ID but not the process name; added references to a variety of exploitation techniques found by other researchers or seen in the wild.

Updated 11 October: I originally wrote that this exploit technique bypassed both disabled macros, and Protected View. That is incorrect: this technique will work if macros are disabled, but the code does not trigger while in Protected View. Thanks to Matt Nelson (@enigma0x3) for pointing out my mistake.

I love reading exploit techniques that rely on native features of the operating system or common applications. As an attacker, I find it diabolically clever to abuse features the target fully expects to be used and cannot turn off without disrupting business. As a defender, I am intrigued by the challenge of detecting malicious use of perfectly legitimate features.

Researchers Etienne Stalmans and Saif El-Shereisuch of Sensepost wrote of a slick way to execute code on a target computer using Microsoft Word - but without the macros or buffer overflows usually exploited to this end. Instead, they use dynamic data exchange, or DDE - an older technology once used for coding and automation within MS Office applications. This is particularly clever because it works even with macros disabled - because it's not using the macro subsystem.

Enable two-factor on your Yahoo account... if you can

Yahoo! accounts have very different security options depending on their origin.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know by now that Yahoo! suffered a massive data breach in 2013. The number of accounts reportedly affected changed a number of times, until this week it announced that every single account had been compromised. All 3 billion of them.

Zack Whittaker, security editor for ZDNet, had this to say:

That's good advice - if you can. Many cannot.

Seven steps to minimize your risk of financial identity fraud

This is one of a few Security for Real People blog posts routinely updated once or twice a year, to offer up-to-date advice to consumers and small businesses as threats evolve over time. The recent Equifax breach has put most Americans at a higher risk of identity fraud and is a good reason for an update.

How many times have you replaced your credit or debit card after the number was stolen?

Now how many of those times did you suffer actual harm due to the fraud?

Credit card fraud is frequently in the news - perhaps less now than it was a few years ago, but it still remains a hot topic. Between Sonic, Sabre, Target, The Home Depot, Sears/Kmart, Dairy Queen, Wendy's, Cici's Pizza, Goodwill - the list of businesses whose payment systems were breached to steal card numbers goes on and on.

In a widely-circulated news story in late 2016, researchers at UK's Newcastle University discovered a way to collect Visa card numbers without breaching a merchant. Generally speaking, a card number cannot be used online without also knowing the expiration date and the 3- or 4-digit code on the back. Visa's payment network will block repeated attempts to guess the expiration and security code coming from a merchant - but does not detect guessing attempts spread out across many merchants.

The result is, by automatically and systematically generating different versions of security data for a card number, and trying the different combinations across thousands of merchant websites, a malicious hacker can successfully guess the correct combination of account number, expiration date, and security code in just a few seconds.

So what can you do to take credit card fraud off the top of your list of worries?