Office VBA digital signature serious security issue!

Started by Visisthebest, March 20, 2021, 03:14:10 PM

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Visisthebest

Microsoft identified a security issue with signed VBA code, more info here:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/blogs/upgrade-signed-office-vba-macro-projects-to-v3-signature/

"This vulnerability might enable a malicious user to tamper with a signed VBA project without invalidating its digital signature."

That is very serious, code with malware/ransomware could be released by a bad actor under someone else's digital signature, making it look like they (for instance a reputable company) released this malicious piece of software.
Visio 2021 Professional

Surrogate

VBA macro with digital signature?  :o
I never meet it  ;)

Visisthebest

It is useful for macros used by companies with IT security policies.
Visio 2021 Professional

Surrogate

About 2 years ago i read discussion "VBA death come soon"!
Supportes of conspiracy theory have called the first sign of the beginning of this: VBA will declare potentially dangerous. After that, large companies (IT security policies) will begin to refuse it, and so on...

Thomas Winkel

Like 70% of the world economy depends directly on VBA. ;D
VBA will never die :P

Visisthebest

#5
OfficeScripts for Excel, "the successor of VBA", is still far removed from VBA's capabilities. For Visio there is no OfficeScripts...

Meanwhile Visual Basic is getting a huge new Visual Studio Code-based solution with which you can develop VB and VB.NET applications, when they add VBA to this solution it will be huge. See https://www.twinbasic.com/

This guy has also developed vbWatchDog, by far the best error handler for VBA I could find. Saves tons of development time because error handling in VBA is terrible and this error handler does it for you. See https://www.everythingaccess.com/vbwatchdog.asp

vbWatchDog isn't cheap though, $295 with one year support, but if you hate writing error handling code in VBA it is worth it.
Visio 2021 Professional