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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 819d473a1d96f25a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

231.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 2059ba14c75ce464b953253a152a4d3b SHA-1: d425ecf4d662809187e07fea1e64f784ef02956f SHA-256: 819d473a1d96f25a78e3910457be282c4ff03969eb9b9b410fc296ecf73f70ec
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic, VBScript, and JScript T1059.001 PowerShell T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions and includes environment evasion techniques. The document body text prompts the user to enable editing and content, which is a common lure for macro-based attacks. The XLM macro sheet itself is the primary indicator of malicious activity, likely designed to download and execute 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion HALT gate high OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_HALT
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes multiple GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW environment checks and halts execution when the host does not match the expected user environment. This is a common sandbox-evasion pattern in XLM malware and is stronger than a bare XLM macro-sheet indicator.
  • 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
e8a1aa58975423c594c577ff5e4351a96c7455c0b9588aee6be0dfbd7e968114		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 333487 bytes

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