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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 68afb8d14357c893…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

117.0 KB Created: 2006-01-05 23:22:58 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel Online
MD5: e0c52ba0823c5355ab1304a011327889 SHA-1: 0e810e463b2bdf8a71f1ce93b95a9a781e299000 SHA-256: 68afb8d14357c8931881d635874f36ac1e56e28213f29ee1ea06a42a59f39991
162 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros, including an Auto_Open function, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The macros utilize dangerous functions like RUN, suggesting an attempt to download and execute a secondary payload. The presence of an embedded URL, though benign in this case, is a common lure for such attacks.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • 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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceEvent#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
b88e6556ebec3394f198b0821d1b4ebb1a5a9821570ce347899e05d913cc3687		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 68040 bytes

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