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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 685a8fcb7894acbd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

62.5 KB Created: 2018-12-06 20:43:11 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 984c876c68da3ddf5b6aac739f429792 SHA-1: c0a9d0fdccf4ffbf3297706ab4764c18495f4922 SHA-256: 685a8fcb7894acbd04b96b69651870187dd9539a959a5b363522ce74b9ff741e
380 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1140 Deobfuscate or Obfuscate Malicious Code T1071.001 Web Protocols T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is an Excel spreadsheet containing VBA macros. The Workbook_Open event is triggered upon opening, which then uses WScript.Shell to execute commands. The heuristics indicate that the VBA code downloads and writes a file to disk, likely a second-stage payload. The document body explicitly prompts the user to 'Enable Content', a common lure for macro-based malware.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
e16d743f17f86d942270b0f289b2a53111ab487f1981946b7888213016d0e22c		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12955 bytes

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