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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0178ee8b12324f2f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

110.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f0758e5027576dd28e1d79e498293ab2 SHA-1: b50de176c2b0772adb956e4f74303119a8227623 SHA-256: 0178ee8b12324f2f14acce0772fdf45de15bf126c5160d0335d7108f077faa5c
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1071.001 Web Protocols

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros that leverage dangerous functions like RUN to execute code. The macros reconstruct and use the URL 'http://bartstoppel.com/rqfardzsgihu/555555555.png' to download a second-stage payload, likely an executable disguised as a PNG. The document also contains a lure to enable macros, indicating a typical downloader or dropper behavior.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (1 URL) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • 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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://bartstoppel.com/rqfardzsgihu/555555555.png
    • http://bartstoppel.com/rqfardzsgihu/555555555.png�

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
2ae78684fbae61c5ba58bf278920340a68f1c332376f4df6517f78d1e3d8c92e		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4731 bytes

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