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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5aae1aa8ef071c8f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

147.5 KB Created: 2020-03-31 23:34:27 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 788888abbad31795afb904999e3df7d9 SHA-1: 93e3a686ae4c3439054a6572e223bd30ccb196d5 SHA-256: 5aae1aa8ef071c8fe3606038b88d1749abd319b2afb6ceb766d589027d6f1fac
502 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1140 Deobfuscate or Obfuscate T1071.001 Web Protocols

The sample is an Excel file containing obfuscated VBA macros. The Workbook_Open macro is designed to execute automatically, using WScript.Shell to download and save a payload. The document body contains a lure to 'Please Enable Content to see this Payment details', indicating a social engineering attempt to bypass macro security. The presence of WScript.Shell and Shell() calls, along with the auto-execution of the Workbook_Open macro, strongly suggests a downloader or dropper functionality.

Heuristics 12

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • VBA downloads and writes a file to disk critical OLE_VBA_HTTP_DROP_EXEC
    VBA reads an HTTP response body and writes it to disk (ADODB.Stream SaveToFile). Combined with the auto-exec/Shell paths this is a download-drop dropper even when the COM ProgIDs are built dynamically to evade keyword scanning.
  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Macro.Obfuscation-9804250-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Macro.Obfuscation-9804250-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
840c2bc99f8a59f192fab22b3f99c50bbbb2240a6c2fef32d7aef777cf287bf6
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 33129 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 71 long base64-like blob(s).