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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2c3c72ea187eea37…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

195.0 KB Created: 2020-11-09 01:16:41 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 01d46ddf861fd64fb56aff1919f0d580 SHA-1: 7f174643739ef07fd318cada2be7717ec11df7ea SHA-256: 2c3c72ea187eea3745884f1a12955effae2dbebff2ee454559827e10d9614c74
60 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample is an encrypted Excel 4.0 macro sheet, indicated by the OLE_XLM_ENCRYPTED_MACROSHEET heuristic. The presence of an AutoOpen macro (OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN) suggests it is designed to execute automatically upon opening. The document body is unreadable, but the heuristics strongly indicate a malicious macro sheet, likely used as a loader for further stages.

Heuristics 2

  • Encrypted Excel 4.0 macro sheet high OLE_XLM_ENCRYPTED_MACROSHEET
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet and BIFF FILEPASS encryption. Password-protected XLM macro sheets, especially the default Excel password path, are a common malware evasion pattern because static formula extraction may fail until the workbook is decrypted.
  • 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.