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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 16f740df14e29ed9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

380.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 5c59d6d94bf17f4aed22384050a1eb07 SHA-1: d983061d4d9c719850e761c84577356cbe50cc5e SHA-256: 16f740df14e29ed9a37e06a2345dce71f1574344655186a48d7fe0a3ed7ef35e
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 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet that contains an Auto_Open macro. This macro is designed to prompt the user to enable content, a common lure. Upon enabling, it constructs URLs and uses the CALL function to execute commands that download and run a second-stage payload from the embedded URLs.

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