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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 756548874502ab34…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

458.5 KB Created: 2009-08-28 01:13:41 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a6f1e23db8273af1a7f950322f6f1007 SHA-1: ab7a110966e5cb4fa21e8cad644e2a725b97b30d SHA-256: 756548874502ab34fd919a4ec8e9f0b42a02f350bb69183484088b921a7d9f38
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 spreadsheet containing XLM macros. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro and the use of dangerous functions such as RUN. The macro sheet is named 'XL4Poppy', suggesting a potential identifier for this malware variant. The primary function of these macros is to execute arbitrary code, likely to download and run a secondary payload.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • Legacy Excel formula macro virus marker critical OLE_XLS_FORMULA_MACRO_VIRUS
    Workbook stream contains self-identifying legacy Excel formula macro virus markers. This indicates the document carries formula macro virus content even when no VBA project or modern XLM macro-sheet structure is present.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
c88be7418a5b831abffddbb5a2bb235ddc1c27864d7cc1ed31a2ce720f6821a0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 552209 bytes

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