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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 748ff169e4328139…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

90.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f4690407030b56d92733916f20a042ed SHA-1: 53fce4d4f822a2dd108ab3a678737c2206c11bb8 SHA-256: 748ff169e432813950d614abf1edb131bc1736d7cc66b09a922be9a0bd60a57a
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing both Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros and VBA macros. The XLM macros include an Auto_Open entry, and the VBA macros contain CreateObject and CallByName calls, indicating malicious intent. The VBA script attempts to construct a URL by concatenating strings: "htt" & "ps:" & "//sherpa" & "com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/test.xls", which resolves to https://sherpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/test.xls. This URL is likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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.
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • CallByName call high OLE_VBA_CALLBYNAME
    CallByName call
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
ec9c77fa230626371a5c1cbb524e132cafd43f9462e911dc87137b0b3e491341		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7584 bytes
macros.bas
59274557647816dd450d1c52b550d32aad5b4d813e703f9dbe419cc70992ff6e		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 5862 bytes

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