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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 86565d710147d9df…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

370.0 KB Created: 2020-07-10 10:41:45 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b40b67c744a92c563b42b57a2ed61734 SHA-1: 58ec5dd0435820d4ae422c4867971d227b83da3c SHA-256: 86565d710147d9df2c1a7b1681ec2c00372af8d1007ed1dc81d718074d0eb68c
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function, indicating an attempt to execute external code. The document body is heavily obfuscated, but the presence of a 'SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE' heuristic suggests it impersonates a document signing service to trick the user into enabling macros. This is a common delivery mechanism for macro-based downloaders. No specific malware family could be identified.

Heuristics 5

  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs high 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.
  • 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
  • Document signing service impersonation lure medium SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE
    Document impersonates DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or a similar signing service in a signing-request context
  • 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://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
da77ab39af17d06ef0aa938b026aa1651844024a6002e4dabace558851367338
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 122652 bytes