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Global rank
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Month rank
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IOCs

FormBook is a data stealer that is being distributed as a MaaS. FormBook differs from a lot of competing malware by its extreme ease of use that allows even the unexperienced threat actors to use FormBook virus.

Spyware
Type
Unknown
Origin
1 January, 2016
First seen
13 September, 2024
Last seen
Also known as
Xloader

How to analyze Formbook with ANY.RUN

Type
Unknown
Origin
1 January, 2016
First seen
13 September, 2024
Last seen

IOCs

IP addresses
82.180.175.114
172.67.177.75
154.23.147.231
149.100.155.162
212.24.127.107
38.40.172.217
154.23.134.144
206.188.193.90
152.199.21.175
54.150.239.82
172.67.215.254
45.196.105.38
45.122.135.248
65.109.117.196
192.175.100.228
46.242.157.30
103.14.122.66
172.67.160.165
178.20.227.11
154.80.192.235
Hashes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fzturf.com
trishpintar.com
91967.net
travisline.pro
mosiacwall.com
leontellez.com
gk84.com
giallozafferrano.com
mfmz.net
podplugca.com
b2b-scaling.com
greatbaitusa.com
completetip.com
vaskaworldairways.com
emeeycarwash.com
hbiwhwr.shop
gracefullytouchedartistry.com
weoliveorder.com
vistcreative.com
motorcycleglassesshop.com
URLs
http://www.assioninstitute.online/m10i/
http://www.a2zglobalimports.com/kmge/
http://www.avada-casino-tlj.buzz/bc01/
http://www.972.studio/d16h/
http://www.asposted.online/gy15/
http://www.aggiemonroe.net/sx01/
http://www.sdcollections.shop/he2a/
http://www.atiana-gadalka.online/l26n/
http://www.ysticastrospain.online/m49z/
http://www.ihq48.beauty/tqug/
http://www.erhgtfd.buzz/t10y/
http://www.ameeraglow.com/6bu2/
http://www.awlc7038.vip/b31a/
http://www.liamcollinai.com/na10/
http://www.jzmbgjj.com/j7e/
http://www.ranziin.shop/f19g/
http://www.agestore.online/p25o/
http://www.laske.xyz/rn94/
http://www.agoraeubebo.com/niik/
http://www.abacuzz.dev/hc58/
Last Seen at

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What is FormBook malware?

FormBook stealer is an infostealer‍ trojan available as a malware-as-service. This malware is often used by attackers with low technical literacy and little programming knowledge. FormBook can be used to steal various information from infected machines.

Despite how easy it is to set up and use, the malware has advanced stealing and evasion functions including the ability to pull stored and recorded user input. In addition, the FormBook stealer is capable of searching for, viewing, and interacting with files, and taking screenshots. Even though the stealing capability of this virus can be considered somewhat average, its ease of operation, the injection schema, and a set of effective measures that the malware takes to avoid detection by antivirus software made FormBook a popular virus in the hacker community and, unfortunately, its popularity is only continuing to rise in 2019.

General description of the FormBook stealer

Written in C and x86 assembly language, FormBook is sold as a PHP control panel and can be purchased on highly accessible online forums for merely 30 dollars.

Uniquely, unlike the majority of existing viruses that exploit the latest vulnerabilities or zero-days, FormBook can inject into processes and set up function hooks utilizing already known issues. Hence the claim made by the makers, that the virus will work flawlessly regardless of the Windows version.

Together with its stealer functionality and evasion techniques, the virus knows how to execute instructions from a control server that includes starting new processes, their injection, and rebooting the victim’s PC. What’s more, the virus is able to record Windows’ ntdll.dll module into memory and call it directly, which makes API monitoring and user-mode hooking almost insufficient.

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FormBook malware analysis

A video simulation recorded on the ANY.RUN interactive malware analysis service allows us to take an in-depth look at the behavior of this clever virus and other malware such as Dridex and Lokibot with their elaborate anti-evasion techniques.

formbook execution process graph

Figure 1: Processes created by FormBook during execution as shown by ANY.RUN simulation

  • As shown by the ANY.RUN simulation, firstly the virus established connection to the CnC server;
  • After this, a malicious executable file, in this analysis's case pretending to be a .png is being dropped or overwritten and executed;
  • Then, FormBook proceeds to steal the personal data and change the autorun value in the registry. Also, the virus loads DLL from Mozilla Firefox creates files in the user directory, and starts CMD.EXE to set up persistence and later begin process injection;
  • Finally, injected Firefox.exe is executed for logging keystrokes, stealing clipboard data, and extracting authentication information from browser HTTP sessions.

Distribution of the FormBook stealer

According to FormBook analysis, malware is usually distributed via email campaigns that utilized a wide array of infecting mechanisms and can contain a number of various file attachments. Among the most commonly observed attachments are either PDFs, DOC or EXE, or ZIP, RAR, ACE, and ISO files.

Campaigns in which the virus is distributed through files with PDF extensions are known to utilize shipping-related themes and usually include a download link that points at the malicious code instead of the actual virus. DOC and EXE campaigns utilize macros to install and run the virus. Often, the virus is retrieved as a .PDF file in such a case. Finally, archive campaigns are considered to be the most common attack vector for this virus and usually revolve around a business-related theme, such as a payment order. In the case of this attack vector, attachments either contain a link to the FormBook stealer EXE file or install and run the virus on victims' PCs directly.

In 2020 Formbook has become quite popular as it used Covid-themed emails for decoys with subject headings such as “Government Response to Coronavirus Covid-19”.

FormBook execution process

Sandbox simulation performed on the ANY.RUN interactive malware hunting service allows us to detect and investigate the behavior of FormBook in a lot of detail.

text report of the formbook malware analysis

Figure 2: A text report generated by ANY.RUN

After downloading the malicious file the only thing needed to start the contamination is for the file to be opened. In a case when Microsoft Office file (doc, xls, rtf) is used as an infection source, after it is opened the malware exploits the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability, thus Microsoft Office Equation Editor proceeds to download a malicious executable file and run it.

After infecting the victim's PC, the virus copies and renames itself into a directory that differs based on the privileges of the user. If an admin account is used, the virus installs itself in either %ProgramFiles% or %CommonProgramFiles%. On the other hand, if the privileges are not elevated, then the virus will copy itself into %TEMP% or %APPDATA.

Also, Formbook trojan changes the autorun value in the registry depending on is it was running with normal or elevated privileges. Next, the malware copies itself into a directory it proceeds to check if it’s being run on a virtual machine or analyzed, evaluating the best anti-evasion option that can be utilized in a particular situation. Meanwhile, the virus will try to evaluate the USERNAME environment variable to find out if it’s launched in simulation, while also checking for the presence of debuggers. It should be noted that the malware uses particularly clever techniques while performing an analysis, for example, all shared strings such as command server names are decoded only briefly if they are absolutely required, which makes FormBook highly elusive. In the next step, the virus uses the same injection method to an active explorer.exe process which is only employed as a non-permanent staging ground.

The virus occasionally performs injections into web browser processes and explorer.exe. After injecting into the process, the virus chooses a random application from a static list. Then, the virus proceeds to run the chosen application in suspended mode and copy itself in the address space of the suspended process, thus mimicking a genuine Microsoft process. Next, the virus exits the original process which leaves FormBook's dead code in explorer.exe as a result. From this stage, new FormBook processes can inject targeted applications like web browser processes, which in the case of this particular ANY.RUN simulation is Firefox.

Depending on the objective process, the virus can establish various function hooks. Being run from inside the context of an already generated process, the virus starts to go through every currently active process, trying to identify targeted programs. As soon as a target is found, FormBook will inject itself into it and install a particular set of API hooks, that are based on the target program. The data is then saved in files in the %APPDATA% directory until it is sent to the C&C server. Pay attention to this function to detect malware.

How to avoid infection by FormBook?

The best counteraction technique is to exhibit caution when receiving emails with attachments from unknown senders. Attackers usually use social engineering to trick victims into downloading and opening infected files.

Deleting any suspicious emails from the inbox is a good way to stay safe. If the infection is already detected, a good practice is to carry out an analysis of all devices connected to the network for established CnC or potentially malicious URL connections. Once a suspicious email is received, perimeter settings can be adjusted to block all related emails in the future. Finally, if an infected file is already downloaded, the host should be quarantined until the threat is completely mitigated.

How to detect Formbook using ANY.RUN?

Formbook trojan usually injects into explorer.exe and another processes from the list, such as firefox.exe and msiexec.exe. Knowing this malware's function you can take a look at the process tree after a while during execution and easily determine either the sample is Formbook or not.

formbook execution process tree Figure 3: A tree of processes created by Formbook during its execution

Conclusion

Thanks to extreme ease of use and low cost, FormBook is gaining traction in the criminal community. Not only is the virus's functionality freely accessible for download on open hacker forums and easy to set up without any programming knowledge, but it also comes equipped with some highly advanced anti-evasion techniques, that make detecting it with anti-virus software ultra-difficult. ANY.RUN interactive malware hunting service enables to study FormBook in detail from a secure environment and implement cybersecurity measures accordingly.

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