Author: Thomas Elkins
Contributors: Matt Green, James Dunne, and Hernan Diaz
Rapid7 routinely conducts research into the wide range of techniques that threat actors use to conduct malicious activity. One objective of this research is to discover new techniques being used in the wild, so we can develop new detection and response capabilities.
Recently, we (Rapid7) observed malicious actors using OneNote files to deliver malicious code. We identified a specific technique that used OneNote files containing batch scripts, which upon execution started an instance of a renamed PowerShell process to decrypt and execute a base64 encoded binary. The base64 encoded binary subsequently decrypted a final payload, which we have identified to be either Redline Infostealer or AsyncRat.
This blog post walks through analysis of a OneNote file that delivered a Redline Infostealer payload.
