Malicious Office (OLE) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2287527e2997d427…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE)

36.0 KB Created: 2020-11-25 10:43:31 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 3a70464d73d42cb9e9cf6d495f9c762f SHA-1: 8cea84aa861f4ada0565059a6288268633b1c709 SHA-256: 2287527e2997d427bdb69601b4e233bf175ab91ef8a28a9f063d4f65ff40baf9
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled workbook containing an Auto_Open entry, which is a critical finding indicating automatic execution upon opening. The presence of dangerous formula APIs like RUN suggests the macro is designed to execute arbitrary code, likely a downloader for a second-stage payload. No specific family could be identified, and no direct IOCs like URLs or hashes were extracted from the macro content itself.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
3be66a97abc2075101137279affd72240a5d5753dfece288a3c404ab64561fc1
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6642 bytes