107. APT29 Abuses PowerPoint for Side-Loading

Hello everyone! Side-Loading once again! According to Check Point report, APT29 continues to distribute WINELOADER via phishing emails.

These emails contain malicious links to wine.zip. The archive contains wine.exe - a legitimate PowerPoint executable, AppvIsvSubsystems64.dll - a required dependency for the PowerPoint executable to run, and ppcore.dll - a malicious DLL - GRAPELOADER, which is used to download WINELOADER.

I'm sure you've already spotted a low-hanging fruit for detection! Yes, I'm talking about this renamed PowerPoint executable! For example:

event_type: "processcreatewin"

AND

proc_file_originalfilename: "powerpnt.exe"

AND NOT

proc_file_name: "powerpnt.exe"

Of course, you can hunt for other common Microsoft Office related binaries as well! Happy hunting!

See you tomorrow!

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