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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 22cee8f4e985953c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.4 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 3d69e2aa20f184aaaf74cca073bb413a SHA-1: 40a6819d2e2f9395e894a2b5121f11cc51854d73 SHA-256: 22cee8f4e985953c6c3e0d514633bc38d5775b5b9dec4c14c481c1a110d97de3
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet (XLM) that uses an Auto_Open function to execute a command. The document body explicitly instructs the user to "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content" to bypass security warnings. The extracted macro reveals a command that reconstructs to 'cmd /c msh a http://0xc12a24f5/c.html', indicating it downloads and executes a payload from the specified URL. This is a common lure for macro-based malware delivery.

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.
  • 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
0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1073 bytes