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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6de0599825e73d25…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

331.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 611075fcbcca983bce449345fb916a79 SHA-1: 95c74ba5d54bd9e4b18be6844cfcd1ebd6c3cfdc SHA-256: 6de0599825e73d25db88b9aa41099551ded1d695c8fd539ec6f098b64bca1e67
242 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, which is a critical finding. These macros utilize dangerous functions like RUN and CALL, and specifically reference ShellExecute, indicating an attempt to execute arbitrary code. The script attempts to construct strings like 'Keyl32' and 'CryA' and calls functions that likely download and execute a second-stage payload from the embedded URL.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Docusign0521-9864805-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Docusign0521-9864805-0
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • 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.
  • 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 https://ctxpress.com/ds/261120.gif
    • https://ctxpress.com/ds/261120.gif�

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
aa837a287543a9593dc9ad53c5a1043539349d9d7158b9d02f92e2bb7330dc0f
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6677 bytes