If you still have some coffee left to drink after reading this, here’s an example of a Sudoku puzzle generated by the spreadsheet used in this attack. The snooped data, which probably reveals more than you’d like about your computer, is then encoded and mailed out to an aol.com address.
The installed malware gathers system information using some standard commands: ipconfig to get network information, tasklist for a list of all the programs and services you are running, and systeminfo to find out about your hardware, operating system and patches. Of course, in the background a rather less amusing macro is installing and running some malware. Once those pesky security measures are bypassed you can solve as many Sudoku as you like. The attackers even provide simple instructions to help you turn macros back on: It sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? Generating Sudoku puzzles requires a program to run the program requires macros. Microsoft responded by disabling macros by default, all but killing off the macro malware threat.īut macros are still in common use, and the trick used here is quite simple: if you want to generate a puzzle to solve, you have to enable macros. Microsoft Office includes the powerful programing language Visual Basic for Applications, accessible from Office documents as macros.īack in the 1990s, macros were the weapon of choice for cybercriminals.
However, rather than rely on a vulnerability to install the malware, it uses sleight-of-hand instead. This spreadsheet hides a nasty secret: it contains malware. Perhaps not so harmless if it’s the Microsoft Excel based Sudoku generator spreadsheet that arrived in SophosLabs recently. As the end of the year approaches and things calm down around the office, what better way to while away a few minutes than with a harmless Sudoku?
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