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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 688bbae50b61363c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.0 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 8c3b12d55ce4cf16a81537895bad90c7 SHA-1: 9cdec61b36ad48c6a5f4d4b0ff61d37ccaff2566 SHA-256: 688bbae50b61363ce80f898490bbc48b9bf2b8dec95791870966697a61a3b7f7
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled workbook that uses an "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content" lure to trick the user into running the embedded XLM macro. The macro attempts to execute a command that downloads a payload from the URL "http://0xc12a24f5/c.html" or "http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html". This indicates a downloader or droppper functionality.

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