Information
This rule prevents Office apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, from being used as a vector to persist malicious code on disk.
Rule ID and name:
- 3b576869-a4ec-4529-8536-b80a7769e899 (Block Office applications from creating executable content)
The recommended state for this setting is: 3b576869-a4ec-4529-8536-b80a7769e899:1 (Block).
Note: More information on ASR rules can be found at the following link: Use Attack surface reduction rules to prevent malware infection | Microsoft Docs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-defender-exploit-guard/attack-surface-reduction-exploit-guard
Attack surface reduction helps prevent actions and apps that are typically used by exploit-seeking malware to infect machines.
Malware that abuses Office as a vector might attempt to save malicious components to disk that would survive a computer reboot and persist on the system. This rule defends against this persistence technique by blocking access (open/execute) to the code written to disk. This rule also blocks execution of untrusted files that might have been saved by Office macros that are allowed to run in Office files.
Solution
To establish the recommended configuration via GP, set the following UI path to 3b576869-a4ec-4529-8536-b80a7769e899 with a value of 1 :
Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Microsoft Defender Antivirus\Microsoft Defender Exploit Guard\Attack Surface Reduction\Configure Attack Surface Reduction rules: Set the state for each ASR rule
Note: This Group Policy path is provided by the Group Policy template WindowsDefender.admx/adml that is included with the Microsoft Windows 10 Release 1709 Administrative Templates (or newer).
Impact:
When a rule is triggered, a notification will be displayed from the Action Center.