
Bumblebee Returns: The Voicemail VBA Macro
An accounts-payable clerk opened a voicemail-notification email, followed a OneDrive link, and a Word macro quietly pulled a loader onto the host. Follow the chain from a sender-spoofed phishing message through a VBA macro, PowerShell, and signed-binary proxy execution to the Bumblebee loader's TLS command-and-control.
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Investigation Tasks
Complete each task by investigating alerts and submitting your findings.
Triage the alert
0An accounts-payable workstation tripped an Office-child-process rule this morning. Before you chase artifacts, read the situation: a voicemail-notification email landed in the mailbox, a document was pulled from a cloud share, and a script interpreter ran out of a word processor. Orient yourself to the timeline, then move on to the evidence.
Trace the delivery
15The intrusion starts in the mailbox. One inbound message posed as a voicemail notification, failed sender authentication, and steered the recipient to an external file share rather than carrying an attachment. Establish who sent it.
Identify the lure document
15Following the link did not compromise anything on its own. The recipient downloaded a file from the share and opened it, and that file is where execution began. Name the document that was pulled down and opened.
Catch the macro handoff
15Opening the document did not run the payload directly. The macro reached for a trusted scripting tool to do the work, and that parent-child relationship is the clearest sign of compromise on the host. Identify the interpreter the document spawned.
Recover the loader
15After the script ran, execution was proxied through signed system binaries to run attacker code from the user profile. Recover the library that was ultimately loaded.
Cut off the channel
15Once the loader was running it reached out to attacker infrastructure to take orders. To contain the host and block the channel, identify the command-and-control host it beaconed to over TLS.
Classify the proxy execution
15For the report, classify how the attacker ran the loader through a signed Windows installer binary to evade controls that watch for unknown executables. Map that behavior to its MITRE ATT&CK technique.
7 tasks · 90 points total
Training Tools
SIEM Console
Log analysis & SPL queries
Email Console
Email header & content analysis
Firewall Console
Network traffic analysis
XDR Console
Endpoint detection & response
Skills You'll Build
Ideal for newcomers to SOC operations. Guided investigation with clear indicators.
Prerequisites
- No prior experience required
- Familiarity with SIEM concepts
- Familiarity with Email concepts
- Familiarity with Firewall concepts
- Familiarity with XDR concepts
Ready to investigate?
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