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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 166d25cad2217d33…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

380.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 194725111f6c0b0365ddee6ee5c578b7 SHA-1: 68dfb92a0da5693ef8d5b5f5dde4d2966d4c565e SHA-256: 166d25cad2217d3333af52d3bff407e1168490bfe1f64b22dacfc07105eccc95
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros, indicated by the OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME heuristics. The document also contains an enable lure, prompting the user to enable macros. The extracted URLs suggest the macro's purpose is to download a second-stage payload. The XLM macros likely execute code to fetch and run content from these URLs, leading to a malicious outcome.

Heuristics 4

  • 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
  • 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://thedeformo.com/zrbLAqMKy21Y/lena.html
    • https://faithfulroofingco.com/nmsY1dCNaBRO/lena.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
13ea4a1fd330f9266fa91027043baa61f334e3ac691e10ce14b7c7fee97c551c
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8812 bytes