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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 853de9539b6a16c3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

331.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 2b52e8583c12e165ee59544b82367284 SHA-1: 6688ab2481c5f55c66b54ae5917cabd4f3e45eb4 SHA-256: 853de9539b6a16c3b3c9efa0323bb5745ee4460f907e73f3d19c7d5730919184
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, which is a critical indicator of malicious intent. The macros are designed to execute dangerous functions, including calling external URLs. Specifically, the macro attempts to download content from http://sadgad.ru/ds/231120.gif, likely to fetch and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of ShellExecute API calls further supports the execution of external code.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (1 URL) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime), across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell), or split across multi-char fragment cells a download formula concatenates by reference (=A1&A2&… / CONCATENATE(...)). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries, LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells, and FORMULA cell-reference concatenation in token order.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Docusign0521-9864805-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Docusign0521-9864805-0
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • 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.
  • 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 http://sadgad.ru/ds/231120.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
3bec9e172ccd232a06c19125f84a780ce4976b1b3bed592580b4a95a301f6034		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6294 bytes

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