Qbot — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ea7ada44215bb4ee…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

88.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a9d2a402695158fcc2ec3a975e860312 SHA-1: 9d6f2d693865a1872d2d537fadaa60487a5e94f4 SHA-256: ea7ada44215bb4ee4f4d9b8cb2194640e692570294bb3009afff3bae4be3c660
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Qbot · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions, including constructing URLs from cell arrays. The reconstructed URLs are "https://taketuitions.com/dTEOdMByori/j.html", "https://constructorachg.cl/eFSLb6eV/j.html", and "https://oel.tg/MSOFjh0EXRR8/j.html". ClamAV identifies the file as Xls.Downloader.Qbot1120210-9905989-0, suggesting a Qbot downloader family. The macro likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload from one of these URLs.

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

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