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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8529b76366ee7001…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: d2ce6027f99553d30d36cf329acb87ff SHA-1: 36556b90063ae70d2dbfc6dbc33ffa44233f63a5 SHA-256: 8529b76366ee7001dee3c9d25a05f5bb192783a4ebd1bb379e0494c54dce8a3b
162 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled workbook that uses an 'enable content' lure to trick the user into executing the macro. The macro is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of the two provided URLs. The presence of an Auto_Open defined name further confirms the macro's intent to execute automatically upon opening.

Heuristics 5

  • XLM Auto_Open workbook with payload URL or enable-content lure critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_PAYLOAD_LURE
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet with Auto_Open / Auto_Close and also exposes a payload URL or enable-content lure in the OLE bytes. This combination is a high-confidence XLM downloader/social-engineering pattern even when formula recovery cannot decode the full macro chain.
  • 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
  • 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://silvertoncc.com/ys1Btp80hx/th.html
    • https://christleadersworld.com/1TaIPHnbwbNV/th.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
740337535414e50f998f7a71055f9de0e2208abc42faca490883ba1d9c48deb1
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8349 bytes