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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 1cfc3a6001acce0c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

82.0 KB Created: 2020-06-22 16:20:38 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 0504fefaeae8ae262cebc1ea7b020a8e SHA-1: f89dcb6a12a3cb9858d926dbc0afc2b0f5395306 SHA-256: 1cfc3a6001acce0c37de045a062e045f91ef1cc01ef2c7d9b1266c20725eeb1d
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1140 Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content', a common social engineering tactic to bypass macro security. The presence of an Auto_Open macro and the environment-evasion techniques suggest the intent is to download and execute a secondary payload.

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.
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion close gate critical OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_CLOSE
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes environment checks with GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW, then shows a fake corruption/error message and closes the workbook when the host fails those checks. This is a malware sandbox-evasion pattern, even when the later payload stage is hidden behind obfuscated defined-name flow.
  • 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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
740df1c89428dd5abe630db3759cf88a766270218a1cdbab72d1c30d91afa976		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 29825 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.