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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9a8354e138e9a773…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

274.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 754118ba489515384b9607af8afb0818 SHA-1: a16a7be15f0d55a3a1e8aa771752d2740cd7b0a6 SHA-256: 9a8354e138e9a773581bb74e52e6e1a7dffb3fb0f6ec1859b4a4d7dc62421c97
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro, indicating it will execute automatically when opened. The document body and heuristics suggest a lure to impersonate a document signing service (like DocuSign) to trick the user into enabling macros. The extracted URL is likely used to download a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 5

  • 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
  • Document signing service impersonation lure medium SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE
    Document impersonates DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or a similar signing service in a signing-request context
  • 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.algostore.in/algostoreold/printme.php

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
ca80e88cd474cd0d71bde418a2e548d8cb333dc0cecacf8e81a1ad1e4f24f2ff
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 5875 bytes