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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8e838bf771450aeb…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.56 MB Created: 2016-04-08 13:33:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-05-19
MD5: 54135a65680fc6e6e0148c97200f3269 SHA-1: ffc7bd0130f783ff4e4405796ec65b582258b31d SHA-256: 8e838bf771450aeb53d8fba7c714722272eaac3086b2d49fa7a6a53ae5208d84
482 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1140 Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

The sample is a macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet that contains a Workbook_Open macro. This macro is designed to execute obfuscated VBA code that utilizes WScript.Shell and CreateObject to download and execute a second-stage payload from the embedded URL http://www.frez.co.uk. The presence of the 'Password-protected archive handoff' heuristic suggests the document may be instructing the user to open a password-protected file, which is a common lure for malicious documents.

Heuristics 12

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Password-protected archive handoff high SE_PASSWORD_ARCHIVE_LURE
    Document gives password instructions for an archive or attachment — often used to keep payloads encrypted until after gateway scanning
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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.frez.co.uk

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
9441eb491c849976a71044aec4a61386ea540d5495ab91c7bbffe17df06bfeec		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1438227 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 2 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).

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