Qbot — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b08a69578526f175…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

88.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 7aafde59d7ffce82a291323ccf651fa7 SHA-1: da195bf7e470acd8805b0c39bb9d2d9f4dd8a2a0 SHA-256: b08a69578526f175ee88b8f87eaf7084cdb5b04d1774224e562d8bf96f9069b5
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Qbot · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: Malicious Script

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that leverages the Auto_Open functionality to execute. Heuristics indicate the presence of dangerous XLM functions, specifically the RUN function, and the reconstruction of three URLs from cell arrays. These URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload, consistent with Qbot downloader behavior. The ClamAV signature also explicitly identifies it as Xls.Downloader.Qbot1120210.

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: Xls.Downloader.Qbot1120210-9905989-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Qbot1120210-9905989-0
  • 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://taketuitions.com/dTEOdMByori/j.html
    • https://constructorachg.cl/eFSLb6eV/j.html
    • https://oel.tg/MSOFjh0EXRR8/j.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
6a291c05ad02b9e36b3d7f60bd391f516555c9b8d9f054b5c4660c1cbfebea8b		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11036 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.