OpenOffice macro worm exposes bad bunny

update Sophos has warned users of the multi-platform OpenOffice productivity tool not to open any files named "badbunny.odg" -- which releases a worm exposing users to an image of a man in a bunny suit and a scantily clad woman performing a sexual act in woodland.

The macro-based worm, named SB/Badbunny-A, does not appear to pose any threat to infected systems aside from downloading and displaying the pornographic JPEG image. Mark Harris, Director of SophosLabs, wrote on his blog early this week that the sample of the worm "appears to have been sent in by the author(s)".

While the virus has not been seen in the wild, nor is it likely to affect customers, according to Harris, it does expose some holes in the productivity tool as its written in cross platform scripting languages.

Once opened the OpenOffice file (badbunny.odg) launches a macro that behaves in several different ways depending on the user's operating system.

On Windows systems, it drops a file called drop.bad which is moved to the system.ini in the user's mIRC folder, while executing the Javascript virus badbunny.js that replicates to other files in the folder.

On Apple Mac systems, the worm drops one of two Ruby script viruses in files called badbunny.rb and badbunnya.rb.

On Linux systems, the worm drops both badbunny.py as an XChat script and badbunny.pl as a Perl virus.

"This is old-school malware -- seemingly written to show off a proof of concept rather than a serious attempt to spy on and steal from computer users," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for antivirus vendor Sophos.

"A financially motivated hacker would have targeted more widely used software and not incorporated such a bizarre image. This is not a piece of malware which we expect to see spreading in the wild, despite its use of a photograph of unusual wildlife."

Sophos has posted an edited version of the image here.

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Talkback 7 comments

    first_openoffice_virus_emerges Anonymous -- 23/05/07

    Laugh all you want Microsoft...

    The patch is already available.
    (ie: no waiting for PATCH-TUESDAY)

    ...Beat that Microsoft!

    Patch? For a feature? Anonymous -- 23/05/07 (in reply to #320079822)

    Care to elaborate how they patched it? Is it in their CVS/GIT/SVN or something? I'd love to see how you can patch a feature.

    openoffice Anonymous -- 23/05/07

    "Laugh all you want Microsoft...

    The patch is already available.
    (ie: no waiting for PATCH-TUESDAY)

    ...Beat that Microsoft!"

    Well it's a lot easier to patch when you only have to worry about the 20 users who use the software, and the minimal feature set to break...

    openoffice Anonymous -- 23/05/07 (in reply to #320079823)

    Yes, because all 20 users have the same configuration and all.

    QAing any program takes time. Microsoft just stretches on and on. Not to mention that they have yet to patch several XSS/spoofing/data leaking (http://secunia.com/product/12366/?task=advisories)

    20 users? Anonymous -- 26/05/07 (in reply to #320079823)

    Gee, my organisation must the only one in the world using OO, because we have more than 20 users...

    What? Is this FUD? Anonymous -- 23/05/07

    "The macro-based worm, named SB/Badbunny-A, does not appear to pose any threat to infected systems aside from downloading and displaying the pornographic JPEG image.

    But the virus does expose some holes in the productivity tool.

    Users that open the OpenOffice file (badbunny.odg) launch a macro that behaves in several different ways depending on the user%u2019s operating system."

    You just stated that the user has to open it. Not only that, but unless they've lowered OOo's macro (if they raised it, even better, it won't run at all) security level, they'll have to interact even more, by accepting the macro to run.

    Look how they phrased each one. The Microsoft one actually does horrible things, like things to the system.ini (hey, isn't that only administrative-only modifiable?). Yet, the Linux and Mac OS one just drops files. Not to mention that unless there was some privilege escalation not talked about here, the perl script couldn't execute without you blatantly going into a shell and typing "chmod a x suspicious_perl_script.pl," the same goes for the .py.

    Seems like someone is on a FUD spree.

    Misleading title, to say the least. Anonymous -- 23/05/07

    Worms don't require this much user intervention. Also, they take control via actual vulnerabilities, which, this is not a vulnerability, especially in the Mac OS and Linux case, as well as the Windows version.

    Blaster was a worm. This is not even interesting, it's not even in the wild, yet you post a story that had me going? How dare you try to make me think the world is going to end!

    Ok, maybe not, but you had me on my toes, then I read the actual facts, and realized this is just pure ridiculousness.

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