Malicious Office (OLE) / .XLS — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0007fb854611f8da…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

31.0 KB Created: 2021-01-28 12:36:15 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c76b113ac96e7b5ce5a9753a1fcb9f21 SHA-1: 032ed6ecc67965e24cca86218141097ac02e2632 SHA-256: 0007fb854611f8dad444f839c2c22634b2c0bb06c76b9be6f9f590a95e6df935
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 User Execution: Malicious File T1059.005 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that executes dangerous functions, indicated by the 'RUN=0' heuristic. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to view the 'encrypted' content, which is a social engineering tactic to bypass macro security. No specific IOCs like URLs or hashes were extracted from the macro itself, but the presence of the Auto_Open macro and the lure strongly suggest it's a downloader or initial access mechanism.

Heuristics 4

  • Excel 4.0 Auto_Open defined name critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME
    oletools recovered an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry from an Excel 4.0 macro sheet. The raw BIFF name can be tokenized or partially opaque to byte-string checks, but the recovered macro listing confirms the workbook has an XLM auto-execution entry.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet present medium OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet sub-stream — XLM is rarely seen in modern legitimate workbooks and was a major Office malware vector during 2020-2022.
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
7c9cd1c480a781d2815f8a171fbaa15e02f1d46c49aa20393e095cc16b0b510a		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 3406 bytes

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