Chapter 9: Powerful Automation
In this chapter, we will explore automation techniques, focusing first on COM and Windows and then web browsers. We will use the Component Object Model (COM) to automate Outlook, Word, and Excel. Furthermore, we will show you how to automate and entirely remote-control web browsers across operating systems. To understand how to leverage the power of COM, we'll look at the basics and how to create COM objects and invoke their functionality with a few practical examples. So, let's get started.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Understanding COM automation on Windows and how it can be used to automate tasks such as sending emails with Microsoft Office
- Achieving red teaming objectives by automating Microsoft Word and Excel
- Automating and remote controlling web browsers as an adversarial tactic