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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 42a44e52c0b4d310…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

256.5 KB Created: 2006-12-01 20:33:15
MD5: d3a364ed0336ff69de2be8566a60e5c1 SHA-1: 9401eabf3ce15a433d6664525138fe2635803fb5 SHA-256: 42a44e52c0b4d3105ce3f46b7ce7bd30eb24c9b320823e1c25d7ca37f1cf32f8
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open function, which is a critical finding. The macro sheet references dangerous functions like RUN and also reconstructs three URLs from cell arrays. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable Content' to view a bonus list, indicating a social engineering tactic. The presence of ShellExecute and WScript references further supports the execution of external code. The reconstructed URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 8

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • 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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922234757306286203/922484278917472266/WEyOySTfJxwMKmzchristmasnigga.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922232162546253827/922480563741417502/DTMmJDKpZeLJchristmasnigga.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922230029876871191/922475455657947146/VzWPDwlEtzchristmasnigga.bin

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
5e2da942fd49d4b64f533471847ed4005c454aca363c144c5aec55e73d1b7a85		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 221332 bytes

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