- Tactics
- Persistence
- Platforms
- Windows, Office Suite
- Reference
- attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1137.006
Description
Adversaries may abuse Microsoft Office add-ins to obtain persistence on a compromised system. Office add-ins can be used to add functionality to Office programs. (Citation: Microsoft Office Add-ins) There are different types of add-ins that can be used by the various Office products; including Word/Excel add-in Libraries (WLL/XLL), VBA add-ins, Office Component Object Model (COM) add-ins, automation add-ins, VBA Editor (VBE), Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) add-ins, and Outlook add-ins. (Citation: MRWLabs Office Persistence Add-ins)(Citation: FireEye Mail CDS 2018)
Add-ins can be used to obtain persistence because they can be set to execute code when an Office application starts.
How GTK Cyber trains on this
GTK Cyber's Threat Hunting with Data Science course teaches you to build machine-learning detections for techniques like this across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, including the Persistence tactic this technique falls under. Practitioner-led, focused on real detections, not memorizing technique IDs.
Related techniques
- T1037 — Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts
- T1053 — Scheduled Task/Job
- T1078 — Valid Accounts
- T1098 — Account Manipulation
- T1112 — Modify Registry
- T1133 — External Remote Services
- T1136 — Create Account
- T1137 — Office Application Startup
- T1176 — Software Extensions
- T1197 — BITS Jobs
- T1205 — Traffic Signaling
- T1505 — Server Software Component