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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4d21115441459063…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

414.0 KB Created: 2021-12-16 12:07:56 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel@轌Ǘ@榀ﵒǗ
MD5: 8d1d1df2277e8730eee7de7fe28f60e1 SHA-1: 773b3ff48428bdacf2afeb7fc9fd1261a2e0591c SHA-256: 4d21115441459063cf8403f94d3bb37201666be30622cb2cb4e2ffb32827192f
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

This Excel 4.0 macro-enabled document contains an Auto_Open macro that references dangerous functions like RUN. The macro is designed to prompt the user to enable content, a common lure to bypass security settings. The extracted URLs, although marked as confirmed benign, were likely intended to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of ShellExecute and mshta.exe references further supports the malicious intent.

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 mshta.exe high SC_STR_MSHTA
    Reference to mshta.exe
  • 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/914827690882781237/923509513628307516/WIvRRHIemuhammadismyfriend.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/914827690882781237/923509168294461500/rebXcmuhammadismyfriend.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/914827690882781237/923509241996795935/iivKjRymuhammadismyfriend.bin

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
995fd1fab2842b5efea5abd1e74510f71f8e60141dd4daa5916e895859b61c5d		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 71820 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.