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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 08197df4cbc31490…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

172.0 KB Created: 2012-07-04 10:31:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: d8e59fd4c97605599eb9dfd1ffe9da9d SHA-1: 14ffbb292661c6cd9782e402795dc9ca9fb75310 SHA-256: 08197df4cbc31490d8e491f127b36a1b1eb0e7390dbabde6a93fd9410cd97ad9
588 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1140 Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

The sample contains VBA macros with Workbook_Open and Auto_Open subroutines designed to execute automatically. It utilizes WScript.Shell and WMI to launch processes, indicating an attempt to download and execute a second-stage payload. The document body presents a financial statement lure to encourage users to enable macros.

Heuristics 15

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • VBA WMI Win32_Process launcher critical OLE_VBA_WMI_PROCESS_CREATE
    VBA macro builds or references a WMI moniker for Win32_Process and invokes .Create to start a command. This is a high-confidence macro execution chain that often hides the WMI class name through string concatenation or helper functions.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Virus.Mailcab-6702020-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Virus.Mailcab-6702020-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • Auto_Open macro high OLE_VBA_AUTO
    Auto_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Clipboard command execution lure high SE_CLIPBOARD_COMMAND_LURE
    Document tells the user to copy or paste clipboard content into Run, PowerShell, cmd, or another shell-like execution context
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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
  • Environ() call (env variable access) low OLE_VBA_ENVIRON
    Environ() call (env variable access)

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
638a9bf1efd383dd23763bbae1e63aae2df208103afda6fc74ddd73aa702a4e7
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 27763 bytes