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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5eb31b0f8a092a56…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

144.0 KB Created: 2020-06-22 16:20:38 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f3d9971666ea3aea2d2d43b22ed32478 SHA-1: a2f6287d1ab31d89f7b157224026e40e3d335f89 SHA-256: 5eb31b0f8a092a560f8309727dc044db96e3e6c6974f3d5acdb90e9e5ad076be
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro, which is a common technique for executing malicious code upon opening. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing', a lure to bypass macro security. No specific URLs or further payloads were extracted, but the presence of the XLM macro and the lure strongly suggests a downloader or initial execution stage.

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
d2601586a0a684ef7d9235eb4dcf8923edbecf0123858ec181fed7fcf9c8199e		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 79532 bytes

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