Qbot — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bd445bae74162f8e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

109.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 977be1ba4d9b73db93a85df1d55ba1f7 SHA-1: cadadcffb9539f038e36d1d7422704fda525bd3f SHA-256: bd445bae74162f8e6b8d8e855b91d292df13fe28f41d08867edb2a8668d8c734
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Qbot · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions like RUN. The macros reconstruct and embed three URLs which are likely used to download a second-stage payload. ClamAV detection confirms this as a downloader for Qbot. The reconstructed URLs are: https://decinfo.com.br/s4hfZyv7NFEM/y9.html, https://imprimija.com.br/BIt2Zlm3/y5.html, and https://stunningmax.com/JR3xNs7W7Wm1/y1.html.

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://decinfo.com.br/s4hfZyv7NFEM/y9.html
    • https://imprimija.com.br/BIt2Zlm3/y5.html
    • https://stunningmax.com/JR3xNs7W7Wm1/y1.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
230bdabe975ee04968fa009647a2319aa74c7d8f3acbeb25b6d04959c2937676		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11292 bytes

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