Introduction to the term office macro virus

As business application software becomes more and more complex, developers begin to provide programming languages ????in the documentation so that users can modify and customize their own operations.

Most of today's word processing programs, spreadsheets, and databases contain powerful programming languages ??that allow sequences of commands to be used in documents.

These sequences of commands or small programs are called macros.

Therefore, the theorem that data files (or documents) cannot be infected with viruses is no longer true, because every document may now contain executable instructions.

Many applications, such as Microsoft Word, allow the creation of macros.

It can run automatically when an action occurs.

With these conditions, the generation of malicious programs - macro viruses is just a matter of time.

It is extremely easy to create macro viruses. Microsoft's macro languages ??are all subsets of the BASIC language.

BASIC is the programming language favored by many virus creators. It is much easier than assembly language.

So essentially anyone can create a macro virus, so it's not hard to understand why macro viruses are so numerous and increasingly complex.

Macro viruses use the calling capabilities of routines outside the macro language, such as Windows API functions, to perform any operation.

Compared with traditional viruses, the latest feature of macro viruses is that they do not depend on the operating system.

Macro viruses can run without modification on many platforms as long as the application supports interpretation.

For example, the Microsoft Word macro virus can run on any system with Microsoft Word installed (Windows 3.1x, Windows 95, Windows NT, MAC, etc.).