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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 61acfe76e7baffb8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

226.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a1e42bd4e318c011c71cfabd268351e3 SHA-1: fa45e11643cbf8be65847832321bc8200bf60298 SHA-256: 61acfe76e7baffb8ef8303d72f7b040fb1c1aa209e7bba528d2f6f3d29ebdbd1
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that attempts to evade environment checks and uses dangerous functions like RUN. The document body prompts the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content', indicating a social engineering attempt to bypass security measures and execute the macro. The macro is likely designed 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.
  • 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion HALT gate high OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_HALT
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes multiple GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW environment checks and halts execution when the host does not match the expected user environment. This is a common sandbox-evasion pattern in XLM malware and is stronger than a bare XLM macro-sheet indicator.
  • 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
cb0b881381bbfb799c197edb7aa63c2c95b991f32ac52a807a4654fe97531522		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 327682 bytes

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