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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8fa5e3d146cef3c8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

172.5 KB Created: 2020-06-22 16:20:38 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 93a2b8c720c56a9886e0dd802f8ba272 SHA-1: ad4394ebf93ff26876694447a5ccd17dafda4ddc SHA-256: 8fa5e3d146cef3c8306519592ebe8b241feebc11adc47b6a55a9267f068145f3
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled workbook. It contains an Auto_Open macro, which is a common technique for executing malicious code upon opening the file. The document body displays a lure instructing the user to 'Enable Editing' to bypass security measures and view protected content. No specific download or execution URLs were found in the extracted scripts, but the presence of the Auto_Open macro and the lure strongly indicate a macro-based malware delivery attempt.

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
8383884827e104d362283b7f2f78bba5b965156038c8a2b036a7634f3d7eed5b
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 107946 bytes