Skip to content
Install MCP

MITRE ATT&CK sub-technique

T1564.007 — VBA Stomping

Last fetched

T1564.007 (VBA Stomping) is a MITRE ATT&CK sub-technique tracked in WhisperGraph, serving the Stealth tactic.

Description

Adversaries may hide malicious Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) payloads embedded within MS Office documents by replacing the VBA source code with benign data.(Citation: FireEye VBA stomp Feb 2020) MS Office documents with embedded VBA content store source code inside of module streams. Each module stream has a <code>PerformanceCache</code> that stores a separate compiled version of the VBA source code known as p-code. The p-code is executed when the MS Office version specified in the <code>_VBA_PROJECT</code> stream (which contains the version-dependent description of the VBA project) matches the version of the host MS Office application.(Citation: Evil Clippy May 2019)(Citation: Microsoft _VBA_PROJECT Stream) An adversary may hide malicious VBA code by overwriting the VBA source code location with zero’s, benign code, or random bytes while leaving the previously compiled malicious p-code. Tools that scan for malicious VBA source code may be bypassed as the unwanted code is hidden in the compiled p-code. If the VBA source code is removed, some tools might even think that there are no macros present. If there is a version match between the <code>_VBA_PROJECT</code> stream and host MS Office application, the p-code will be executed, otherwise the benign VBA source code will be decompressed and recompiled to p-code, thus removing malicious p-code and potentially bypassing dynamic analysis.(Citation: Walmart Roberts Oct 2018)(Citation: FireEye VBA stomp Feb 2020)(Citation: pcodedmp Bontchev)

Tactics

Related techniques

Parent technique: T1564 · Hide Artifacts

Threat actors observed using this technique

No threat actor is recorded using T1564.007 in WhisperGraph.

© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.

Related pages

Pivot from T1564.007 into its tactic, related techniques and the actors that use it.

Queries

Resolves the segment to this technique or tactic.


MATCH (t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})
RETURN t.id AS id, t.name AS name, t.kind AS kind, t.description AS description
Run yourself →

The tactic(s) this technique serves.


MATCH (t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN tac.id AS id, tac.name AS name
LIMIT 10
Run yourself →

This id's parent technique, if it is a sub-technique.


MATCH (p:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $parentId})
RETURN p.id AS id, p.name AS name
LIMIT 1
Run yourself →

Sub-techniques of this technique, if any.


MATCH (c:ATTACK_PATTERN) WHERE c.id STARTS WITH $subPrefix
RETURN c.id AS id, c.name AS name
ORDER BY c.id
LIMIT 25
Run yourself →

Threat actors observed using this technique.


MATCH (a:ACTOR)-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})
RETURN a.name AS name
LIMIT 100
Run yourself →

Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.