Office 2007 Loader
Lutero Chaloux
Text description provided by the architects. A slim parcel of forgotten roadside land has been transformed into the headquarters for international mountain bike tour operator, H&I Adventures by Loader Monteith, completing the first phase of a new mixed-use brownfield development.
The 5600 square meter plot lies to the west of Inverness in northern Scotland. Owners and operators of H&I Adventures, Catherine Shearer and Euan Wilson, approached Loader Monteith for their expertise in working with challenging sites and locations and progressive approach to sustainability. The clients sought to transform the long and narrow roadside site into a base for their thriving international tourism business and develop two new low-energy homes.
The office is the welcome point for international tour-goers and represents H&I Adventures' focus on hospitality and design excellence. As such, the clients briefed Loader Monteith to deliver architecture that foregrounds and sets a high standard of Scottish design experienced throughout tours. The two-story H&I Adventures office sits to the northeast of the plot boundary, wrapped in slim burnt larch cladding punctuated by a rich corten corner detail and recessed glazing designed to capture the far-reaching views across Beauly Firth.
The office features a workshop, two showers and changing rooms, and a kitchen and breakout space at ground level. The kitchen faces south, overlooking the landscaped car park and mature treeline through a frameless glazed corner. It is lit by floor-to-ceiling sliding glazing, allowing staff and visitors to enjoy level access to the outdoors year-round. A warm material palette of ochre, graphite, and timber cabinetry defines the kitchen, offset by modern white tiling with black detailing. Clean white walls, polished concrete flooring, and timber ceiling paneling maintain a contemporary feeling inside, ensuring the verdant surroundings take focus to create close connections to the landscape.
The first completed house features a Z-shape plan. An open-plan kitchen and living area unfold from the entrance hall, stepping down into a generous social space in line with the sloping site. Custom joinery offers built-in dining seating, lit by large sections of triple glazing. A family bathroom, two bedrooms, and a main bedroom suite is bookended by an external carport to complete the layout.
The house establishes its character and relationship to the landscape through a considered and impactful use of readily-available materials such as timber battens and slender metal. A multi-layered arrangement of varying timber creates a subtle and sophisticated facade, allowing the gentle butterfly roof form to offer visual intrigue. Layered patternation of varying timber widths laid out in gaps and dips adds elegant and subtle interest to the home. The weight of the black timber is broken by a slim metal datum detail on the facade.
The private residence employs timber frame construction, highly insulated to reduce heat loss and warmed by an air source heat pump retained by triple glazing. The home is clad in charred timber, a technique known to maximize durability and weather gracefully. In the summer months, the spaces benefit from natural cross ventilation. Unlike generators, a powerwall battery keeps the house charged without upkeep, fuel, or noise. Paired with solar power, the home draws very little energy from the grid, resulting in a highly efficient and inexpensive building. This approach to minimal energy usage and low embodied carbon materials will be replicated in the second build, which is due to start on-site in 2024.
Palo Alto Networks has recently analyzed a unique loader for Microsoft Office that leverages malicious macros that is being used to deploy numerous malware families. The loader was originally witnessed in early December of 2016, and over 650 unique samples have been observed since then. These samples account for 12,000 malicious sessions targeting numerous industries. The loader itself is primarily delivered via email and makes use of heavily obfuscated malicious macros as well as a user account control (UAC) bypass technique that was originally discovered in August 2016.
As previously mentioned, the loader is primarily delivered via phishing emails. When looking at the roughly 12,000 malicious sessions, we encounter the following subject lines and filenames most frequently:
When looking at what industries were most affected by this threat, we see that High Tech, Professional and Legal Services, and Government were some of the most affected. However, this loader also hit multiple other industries.
Analysis of the various macros used across all of the samples showed the same technique being used amongst almost all of them. All of the macros are obfuscated using a large amount of garbage code and randomly chosen variables. This is most likely the result of some builder being used to generate them.
In the second half of the macro, we see a garbage code, a number of obfuscated strings, as well as a number of strings that are written to the Word document. These strings are in-line with the ploy being used by the attacker based on the witnessed subject line and filename.
It should also be mentioned that in a small number of cases, the attackers chose to make use of the built-in BITSAdmin tool instead of PowerShell to download their malware, as seen in the following example:
Just 11 of the 650 samples made use of BITSAdmin to download their malware within this loader. All of the instances where BITSAdmin was used took place when this loader was originally seen, in early December 2016. It would appear that the attackers quickly changed this in favor of using PowerShell for downloads.
Overall, this new loader is interesting in its use of performing a UAC bypass. Additionally, the widespread use of this loader since December of last year shows that it is being used in numerous campaigns. It is unclear if this loader is being used by one or more groups. Multiple industries have been targeted by this loader, which has been used to deploy multiple malware families.
Scottish architectural studio Loader Monteith has completed phase one of a mixed-use brownfield development in the Scottish Highlands. The headquarters of an international mountain bike tour operator, the development comprises a two-story office building and bike store alongside the first of two private residences. Sited on a slim, sloping 5,600-square-meter (60,278-square-feet) plot of land, the dark timber-framed buildings provide a pleasing contrast with the verdant landscape.
The new office is enveloped in slim charred larch cladding and rich corten accents. Inside, a warm palette of ochre, graphite and time creates a welcoming atmosphere, offering a clear contrast to the dense surrounding treeline.
Subtle details add an understated texture and depth to each building. The large office is broken up with textural corten and large glass doors, adding a lightness to the mass of the building. The homes feature an exterior pattern of panelling, created by arranging varying timber widths within the dark charred facades. The home features a slight butterfly roof line, which is adorned with timber detailing to accentuate the lightly undulating form; the exterior captures the low light at dusk.
Apart from the kitchen and offices, the building also features dressing rooms, showers and a 20-m bicycle workshop whose corner is clad with Corten steel that gives a pop of colour to the grey-black building shell. The large, attic-level office area provides space for ten employees. Low panoramic windows offer them a view of the Beauly Firth to the north.
The house stands on the southwest, higher part of the lot; the second home will be built here as well. With its Z-shaped floor plan and a slightly sloping roof, the house crouches into the surrounding meadowland. Its largest openings face the west and have a view towards the water. In contrast, the north facade and the access side to the west are significantly more closed. The single-storey house has a characteristic split-level layout with a sunken living room.
The facades of the residence differ subtly from those of the flat wood cladding of the office building. Wooden slats of various widths have been mounted at several levels and give the facades both texture and depth. A bronze-coloured drip plate at belly height divides the shell horizontally into three parts. Solar panels on the roof and a battery storage system ensure minimal power requirements from the grid. Loader Monteith want to use the same energy-supply principle for the last of the three buildings.
DETAIL Business Information GmbH is a leading international specialist information group for architecture and structural engineering. Founded in 1961, the company is headquartered in Munich and is part of the European Professional Publishing Group, a holding company for professional information with a focus on the strategic business areas of construction and architecture, recycling, hospitality and fashion.
To run solutions that are created by using the Microsoft Office developer tools in Visual Studio, the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office runtime must be installed on end-user computers. For more information, see How to: Install the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime redistributable. The Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office runtime consists of two main components:
The Office extensions for the .NET Framework. These components are managed assemblies that provide the communication layer between your solution and the Microsoft Office application. For more information, see Understand the Office extensions for the .NET Framework.
The Office solution loader. This component is a set of unmanaged DLLs that Office applications use to load the runtime and your solutions. For more information, see Understand the Office solution loader.
The runtime can be installed in several different ways. Depending on the configuration of the computer, different runtime components are installed when you install the runtime. For more information, see Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime installation scenarios.
7fc3f7cf58