It’s about time.
Microsoft to kill off VBScript in Windows to block malware delivery
Submitted 1 year ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee 1 year ago
SamsonSeinfelder@feddit.de 1 year ago
It is their own Adobe Flash and it’s good that it is faded out. To obscure in modern times, too many security flaws. Only warm nostalgic memories will remain in 10 years.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 1 year ago
It is their own Adobe Flash
No, that was Silverlight. VBS is MS’s JS.
Melkath@kbin.social 1 year ago
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I hope they kill off VBA too. I still see some teams in banks implementing Monte Carlo or PDE solvers in straight VBA 🤢
Dave@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
I have seen critical enterprise applications run in VBA in excel. Removing VBA would cause global economic ruin. I’m pretty sure that’s the unspoken backstory for the Fallout series.
Pistcow@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Can confirm. Worked at several billion dollar corps that would collapse without vba.
OldFartPhil@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Another confirmation here. At my previous job, I was they guy who built Access databases and wrote VBA code… While not ideal, it was a very small business (less than 10 employees) and it was fit for purpose.
When I got a new job at a company with almost 3,000 employees, I was like, “Finally, I’ll be working somewhere that has proper IT resources.” Ha! I soon find out that my department runs critical business infrastructure with Excel macros. And we have a proper IT department.
As everyone has already said, if IT resources are in short supply (or the wait is too long, or building projects with IT support is a PITA), then people will build systems with the tools they have at hand. And that’s often MS Office.
Melkath@kbin.social 1 year ago
My job is literally to keep a NASDAQ company afloat on process automation written mostly in VBA to make up for the sweeping layoffs that were made to keep the CEOs bonuses fat...
HidingCat@kbin.social 1 year ago
WTF, seriously? VBA feels more like a scripting addon (which I suppose it is), not something to build wholesale CRITICAL programs with.
MelodiousFunk@kbin.social 1 year ago
I have seen critical enterprise applications run in VBA in excel.
I wrote one of them. It replaced periodically writing down application outputs on paper and sounding the alarm if something went pear-shaped. It wasn't my job to develop software but I didn't want hand cramps to be my job, either. I had vague ideas about how to do what I wanted to do with Excel so I poked at it and googled until it worked. More than a decade later, I'm no longer there but that freakin spreadsheet is still running 24/7, being proudly showed off during tours of the facility.
I will cackle if MS ever pulls the plug on VBA.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 1 year ago
MS: You have until (now +2 years) to phase out VBA.
Enterprise: panic!
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 year ago
I’ve worked for a major group and I was for a while the only maintainer of a shitty request form in an excel file, sent worldwide to hundreds of people. As they wanted more and more specific functions the stuff grew to thousands of unholy VBA code lines and a huge hidden sheet of data.
That thing even had a fully custom language switch function for all dozens of field labels and their possible values.
I kinda hope they’re still using it (that wouldn’t surprise me) and that their whole workflow will crash and burn when Microsoft finally kills VBA.
aev@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Enterprise will cause a boom in hiring VBA devs to migrate legacy apps to other programming languages, then hear Microsoft will extend support for a few more years, then fire all those VBA devs again. If Microsoft had some wits, they’d create easy tools to migrate VBA to C#.
eee@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Well it’s gotta be done some time… otherwise we end up with another version of COBOL.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 1 year ago
I’m migrating some VBAs to python/pandas and reducing some process times from half an hour to 3 minutes.
AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yup that’s normal because VBA is single-threaded, doesn’t take advantage of vector instructions and even its interpreter is slow. So when someone writes numerical code in VBA working in single precision, and assuming they have an 8 core CPU with AVX2, they’re using only 1/64-th of their CPU’s processing power. On the other hand with Python, while it’s still interpreted, the interpreter is much faster on its own, and you have modules like
numpythat use precompiled routines that take advantage of vector instructions (and possibly multiple cores).MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Btw, Libreoffice supports python scripts. Other offices too?
MooseBoys@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The first hack I ever did was to remove the security add-one my middle school put on our macs so we couldn’t play games. The attack vector was the file APIs in VBScript executed via a word doc. Fun times!
PoolloverNathan@programming.dev 1 year ago
At least you got hardware that wasn’t designed for schools.
MooseBoys@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t think there were any computers designed for K-12 schools at the time. They were PowerMacs, and later, iMacs. They weren’t even set up for multi-user; they were just unlocked all the time.
cesium@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Took them long enough.
Raxiel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What if law enforcement need to make a gooey to trace a hacker?
esc27@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hopefully this means a modern replacement for slmgr.vbs
iwenthometobeafamilyman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not that I’ll miss it but my first student job in college was writing VBscript, so it’s interesting to me personally.
soggyoreo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s okay, we will have python as a replacement.
drdabbles@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Now would be a great time for everybody to dust off their VBScript skills and start offering contracting hours to the tens of thousands of companies that rely heavily on it for daily operations. Make yourself a mint porting scripts from 1996 into a modern language, or even PowerShell if you must.
tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Poorly authenticated process injection will stay though? Ok. Good job guys.
bulwark@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Man I hate VBA as much as the next guy, but when the IT department has your network so locked down you cant install anything. Having that hidden tab in Excel to write a script to automate some mundane task was really useful. I like python, but there’s no fuckin way my ex employer would just allow me to run random python code like they did for VBA. It was a gov job btw.
Willem@kutsuya.dev 1 year ago
Python is soon to be integrated into excel, I might not be a python fan but if it’s gonna replace vba I’m all for it.
Phen@lemmy.eco.br 1 year ago
It’ll only run on cloud. Their employer would probably block that too.
aev@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Wouldn’t it face the exact same security issues as VBA, with drive-by installs of obfuscated malware and executions of arbitrary code?
WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 1 year ago
The article is not about VBA, it’s about VBS. The languages are similar but not the same (why exactly MS did it this way I’ll never know).
VBA is for embedded macros in MS Office documents.
VBS is a standalone language you write into .vbs files that get executed by wscript.exe, no MS office required.
Aatube@kbin.social 1 year ago
Not to mention Python’s in cloud