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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 09051ade3d7c8bc6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

314.5 KB Created: 2018-12-06 20:43:11 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-11-21
MD5: 3b4985250d19c9a0d4aa1e772b247075 SHA-1: 243077c6c342ebbfe77b43ae91da534f9b509f9a SHA-256: 09051ade3d7c8bc6be358107b584eba08fdec0214cfd7c99e4b56f3e1e66d2b5
380 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is an Excel file containing VBA macros, specifically a Workbook_Open macro that utilizes WScript.Shell to download and execute a payload. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'enable content' to resize the spreadsheet, a common tactic to bypass macro security. The VBA script appears to download a file from an embedded URL, which is then likely executed. The obfuscated nature of the script and the use of WScript.Shell indicate a downloader or droppper functionality.

Heuristics 9

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • VBA downloads and writes a file to disk critical OLE_VBA_HTTP_DROP_EXEC
    VBA reads an HTTP response body and writes it to disk (ADODB.Stream SaveToFile). Combined with the auto-exec/Shell paths this is a download-drop dropper even when the COM ProgIDs are built dynamically to evade keyword scanning.
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject 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.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
5300aef91c2b00dcf99e09946561615c0dc9da0b028f6a43f44a5ef29d363b01		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12205 bytes

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