Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) was the first mainstream programming language embedded into Windows OS. It has been actively used by system administrators to automate certain types of tasks without needing to install any third-party software. Available on all modern Microsoft systems, it gradually became a popular choice for malware writers who needed a guaranteed way of performing certain actions without any need to recompile the associated code.
Currently, Microsoft has decided to switch to PowerShell to handle administrative tasks and has left all future VBScript support to the ASP.NET framework. So far, there are no plans to discontinue it in future Windows releases.
The native file extension for VBScript files is .vbs, but it is also possible to encode them into files using a .vbe extension. Additionally, they can be embedded into Windows script files (.wsf) or HTML application (.hta) files. .vbs, .vbe, and .wsf files can be executed either...