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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9099f8ecee77fd79…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

457.5 KB Created: 2021-07-29 19:03:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-25
MD5: 77358b120c49a00939b58f530827101b SHA-1: 0243ff329e56636195dc9f8e2c7e8e23ce9a4d88 SHA-256: 9099f8ecee77fd796796c8a399a103dd35ad32d0a0c596045e96ec56b1836af2
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The document body explicitly instructs the user to enable macros, a common lure technique. Furthermore, heuristics indicate the use of PowerShell and a direct reference to downloading an executable from a suspicious URL, confirming the macro's purpose is to download and execute a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • Reference to PowerShell high SC_STR_POWERSHELL
    Reference to PowerShell
  • LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND
    Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
  • 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
  • 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://179.43.175.187/zqde/Jzqmynb.exe

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
8d6d8c9ba1dec1edf64ee58b4c31df399079e8c1a6f00603b6faa50fe994fbee		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 974 bytes

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