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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0936d35ea26fa9c1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

304.5 KB Created: 2018-12-10 14:35:46 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 2d2c7c2d334fa9fa7e2d04917d2f6528 SHA-1: d56a6bb1aa184fd14320c79e8636813698f9b2a6 SHA-256: 0936d35ea26fa9c179a3dd127af2ad43c6cb7e58d573f21f97eab96b2d4aecfc
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute a formula. This formula reconstructs the string "ws.script.exe" and likely uses ShellExecute to run it, potentially downloading a second-stage payload from one of the three embedded Discord CDN URLs. The document also contains a lure to "Enable Content" to display its contents, a common tactic for macro-based malware.

Heuristics 8

  • 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 (3 URLs) 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.
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • 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 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922230029876871191/922475438117376030/tsOwmleHpqfchristmasnigga.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922230029876871191/922475148093829150/RTGgvyojvsGUTvbchristmasnigga.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922230029876871191/922475023988580372/zjiCZcvPFPEzmoHchristmasnigga.bin

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
577a7c0d7c0a195914be012af2a6dd76b5b31222ae4103b619a8accab2ed0997		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 5516 bytes

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