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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5969bacf6ff4bec6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

118.5 KB Created: 2014-07-15 23:12:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b1cba6022da2b180e9228ae528a631a0 SHA-1: 23afaa6f18bb4985208a835b32e17b2b4141bedd SHA-256: 5969bacf6ff4bec6eecc007b999417e797af617fbefe4ff833e90a79e1012e11
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro and the use of dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function. The document body presents a deceptive message claiming there was a problem opening the content and prompts the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content', a common social engineering tactic to bypass macro security. No specific second-stage payload or external download URL was identified in the extracted evidence.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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
3eb5711a7bf225d2e738bdf2162b978364b323713a767640164a7f9ee43808b7		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 59908 bytes

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