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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 036ecf2a8a2cb301…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.5 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a1cc40a52264303e12bddc570048bae6 SHA-1: 1de8297ec7f22c01c41b082bf9d0493f3325386a SHA-256: 036ecf2a8a2cb301c8e45702d0211d27d4e4a780efde153f847530e292f057ba
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content" lure to prompt the user to enable macros. Upon enabling, an Auto_Open macro is executed, which attempts to run a command to download a payload from the URL http://0xc12a24f5/c.html. The macro itself is obfuscated using character escaping, but the reconstructed command is clear.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • 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
0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1073 bytes

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