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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 513cfd508979169a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

147.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 50aa4fb15d5ff0783c952201ac6ff59e SHA-1: 40bd6daca47a30c42b41981e91ab083a1161d72b SHA-256: 513cfd508979169a09bb340172af4b4491ce422d6e52f9b64582cec4cba4a6c7
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro, which is a common technique for executing malicious code upon opening the document. The document body prompts the user to enable editing and content, a typical social engineering lure to bypass security measures and allow macro execution. The XLM macro sheet contains a call to the RUN function, which is considered dangerous and often used to launch external executables or scripts.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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
0915d2552ddb2320e5ce02e39c24a9991a8443e8219d7d184e040d9b625b21b0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 175565 bytes

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