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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3ce3e9299312eabb…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

240.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b14159bffb1df11b68ed996345a65427 SHA-1: 944f53100d139cc131fbeb1435baa6140514a571 SHA-256: 3ce3e9299312eabba28ead6d8277b16aeee1d38a98b4cb632ce2a1fbf9d0593e
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro, which is configured to execute automatically upon opening. The document body contains a social engineering lure, prompting the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to view the content. This strongly suggests the intent is to bypass security warnings and execute the embedded XLM macros, which are known to be dangerous and can evade environment checks. ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature as a dropper.

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.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Dropper.Agent-9747843-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Dropper.Agent-9747843-0
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion HALT gate high OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_HALT
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes multiple GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW environment checks and halts execution when the host does not match the expected user environment. This is a common sandbox-evasion pattern in XLM malware and is stronger than a bare XLM macro-sheet indicator.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
211442d8f0fb4e9fdde9251a843c6df7010b30c345648bda806910eaca470697		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 335427 bytes

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