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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 25dcf45b63be388f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.2 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b70a2e89b09046ec9dba5c2c46903f4b SHA-1: daef31d07ebc1a3a552c2479fe80357e147ec854 SHA-256: 25dcf45b63be388f7738b8b1318f55721ca9d7dcab193224ec9f7475a215b3e5
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' lure to prompt the user to run macros. The Auto_Open macro executes a command to download a payload from the reconstructed URL 'http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html'. This indicates a downloader attack pattern.

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