Microsoft recently announced that its applications Office 365 they support the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) feature and thus allow antivirus engines to detect and block malicious macros.
Infected macros have long been one of the biggest threats to Microsoft Office users. The company says this new feature will help protect users when working online with documents.
The biggest advantage of AMSI is that it is an open interface that can work with almost any antivirus program, so by default it has Windows Defender support and is also supported by third-party products.
AMSI is already integrated into Office 365 i.e. applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Visio and Publisher. But note that macros will not be scanned if the settings security your is “Enable All Macros” and are listed as trusted or from trusted sites.
Operating system users Windows 10 and with Windows Defender benefit from additional protection, thanks to the mechanism that runs from the cloud and uses the built-in AMSI to determine if a macro is dangerous or not.
“When devices encounter documents with suspicious macro code, Windows Defender sends the metadata and other attributes to the cloud for learning of machines, combined with signals from Office AMSI. The results from machine learning translate into real-time protection for other Windows Defender customers, whether or not they have cloud protection enabled.” notes Microsoft.
AMSI is a technology that was integrated into Windows 10 in 2015 to provide developers with an advanced method for detecting viruses for any data.
