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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5b4e8cfc609d1b87…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 72e53ed12218addf22ad485d63ce9f33 SHA-1: ae546ec35047f0dcbe0fe6ca67f35de85b34f57f SHA-256: 5b4e8cfc609d1b878195f2960a0754046948f38018687c53b304cb2ddc865b2a
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that is designed to execute automatically when the document is opened. The macro attempts to lure the user into enabling macros and then downloads a payload from one of the two provided URLs. The presence of an Auto_Open entry and the lure to enable macros strongly indicate a malicious intent to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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.
  • 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
  • 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 https://stateoftheartacademy.com.br/E4V8njAb2/ue.html
    • https://dsafarm.com/h03itpGP/ue.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
e808156aa76369abc653ef5da0e4637a11444d74c8ce4e627b8f3942d60b3178
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8209 bytes