Qbot — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0f54f54742c34021…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

105.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 5b216d25783d103eb33da5047fbae510 SHA-1: cd47450c4df875bedb6891bb9ac235973cbe119e SHA-256: 0f54f54742c3402165e2de773a38e9bb7bd6a1e631c2cc802e3ea17bb8535455
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Qbot · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open defined name, which is a critical indicator of malicious intent. These macros are designed to execute dangerous API functions and reconstruct URLs from cell arrays. The reconstructed URLs point to external resources, likely for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, consistent with Qbot downloader behavior. The ClamAV detection further supports this classification.

Heuristics 6

  • Excel 4.0 Auto_Open defined name critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME
    oletools recovered an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry from an Excel 4.0 macro sheet. The raw BIFF name can be tokenized or partially opaque to byte-string checks, but the recovered macro listing confirms the workbook has an XLM auto-execution entry.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Qbot11202120-9906200-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Qbot11202120-9906200-0
  • Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet present medium OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet sub-stream — XLM is rarely seen in modern legitimate workbooks and was a major Office malware vector during 2020-2022.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://dongarza.com/gJW5ma382Z/x.html
    • https://headlinepost.net/3AkrPbRj/x.html
    • https://produtoratimedeelenco.com.br/9E6Y322u/x.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
2d69a468deda6ef532bccca4917aca41c7abe1a521540a9fe9f977b5d05e05bf		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11378 bytes

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