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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 22cae78091c21f20…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

90.5 KB Created: 2018-12-06 20:43:11 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c83258f58d504ebcad7c4a20edf7fa39 SHA-1: 4ccf5f0e6a45e133eb85bb7244065e510f088a31 SHA-256: 22cae78091c21f20872225afc645fa37d80d3b321cd9ba7a6fa1c903689f9fea
342 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

This XLS file contains VBA macros that leverage WScript.Shell to execute commands. The Workbook_Open event is triggered upon opening, initiating the malicious script. The script's obfuscated nature and reliance on WScript.Shell suggest it's designed to download and execute a second-stage payload, although the exact mechanism is obscured. No specific family could be identified due to the obfuscation.

Heuristics 9

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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 http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
e7f9fda088669e53cc426fcff17649bbdb20db9e9b90d85525b2051a682ce5b9
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 40254 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 6 shell/COM execution token(s). Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.