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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 28aa0371eff399c0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

293.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 389033e6344dfd187f5e11eb84879faf SHA-1: 49e245741d6f4529e729da82573f950e91716e8e SHA-256: 28aa0371eff399c03d0ba976b8ecd3eb2c191fccd52775c669e37bdfa5eef0bd
122 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros, indicated by the OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME heuristics. The SE_ENABLE_LURE and SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE heuristics suggest the document attempts to trick the user into enabling macros by impersonating a document signing service. The embedded URL, https://atlantisprojects.ca/cheryasd.dll, is likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. No scripts were extracted, but the XLM macros are sufficient to infer malicious intent.

Heuristics 5

  • 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
  • Document signing service impersonation lure medium SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE
    Document impersonates DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or a similar signing service in a signing-request context
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — context-specific rules above attribute URLs they actually evaluated; this rule lists URLs that were present in the bytes but were not otherwise tied to a specific finding.
    URL https://atlantisprojects.ca/cheryasd.dll�
    • https://atlantisprojects.ca/cheryasd.dll

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
0b9225e191e2f1c4daff87c567b1b7f5899a53969be71a50c496405f9b8e5e10		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4180 bytes

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