SquirrelWaffle — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 555d97f2052c8ab8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

247.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 6aae67c6961470681e06714f92620c14 SHA-1: 8a04e65558e55a86cf6d7b75881e5e9a2e250c54 SHA-256: 555d97f2052c8ab8e81698c87f3558506f81d20eeee0138cd2d2e5051a6268aa
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

SquirrelWaffle · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function, to execute code. The macro reconstructs and calls three URLs: http://thanhanhotel.com/M7NvbognImhW/hnhkji.html, https://guardsociety.org/4TMUUI9u/hnhkji.html, and http://bro.jerashfestival.jo/2kAlAJGc/hnhkji.html. This strongly suggests the macro's purpose is to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of these locations, consistent with the SquirrelWaffle family.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.SquirrelWaffle1021-9903731-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.SquirrelWaffle1021-9903731-0
  • 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.
  • 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 http://thanhanhotel.com/M7NvbognImhW/hnhkji.html
    • https://guardsociety.org/4TMUUI9u/hnhkji.html
    • http://bro.jerashfestival.jo/2kAlAJGc/hnhkji.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
8038cb32870f91f07ba8d77d2b38d0de4989e88a9f0271274f420bb3e000a522		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11469 bytes

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