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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 86d86df9000e88b7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

331.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a4b3d6c2f033c91d8d0d45dc26c2a29a SHA-1: c9019d5c492b13fca1abe832794922762fabb325 SHA-256: 86d86df9000e88b71c53d0bf8988590531a569168a5c231a6ffab6fc313cdffa
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros that are configured to automatically execute upon opening. These macros utilize the RUN and CALL functions to execute code, including a reconstructed URL from a cell array, 'https://tured.net/ds/261120.gif'. The presence of ShellExecute API references and the use of dangerous formula APIs like RUN indicate a downloader or exploit execution attempt. The macro's complex CALL function suggests it's attempting to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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://tured.net/ds/261120.gif
    • https://tured.net/ds/261120.gif�

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4805caad40efa88359221773489543a181039fb59e7111454d99230bce3bd306
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6674 bytes