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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 862940d0253123a3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

332.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 0fa0f152e9a98bc1454c35fd09592c6d SHA-1: b1f0450a1939fc97b91b8a019bd83d9a47113496 SHA-256: 862940d0253123a39af64faf23d6c1eb50d3b8baaa5441291356e70b71ccc6aa
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: Malicious Macro T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, which is a critical finding indicating automatic execution upon opening. The macros reference dangerous functions like RUN and construct a URL from concatenated strings, specifically 'https://dashboard.imadeit.com.ng/ds/151120.gif'. This suggests the macro's purpose is to download and execute a second-stage payload from this URL, aligning with a downloader attack pattern.

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 https://dashboard.imadeit.com.ng/ds/151120.gif�
    • https://dashboard.imadeit.com.ng/ds/151120.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4d5531650e0faf8764ddd7b14e6947143c32308cbf699d36f8845764b3b4560a
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 5603 bytes