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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9cf74d11022ff173…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 20baf87ccb2b46bf0a4848e20bdb49cc SHA-1: ddffcc6ef18bdbe598e67f05ee005774cd4d4be8 SHA-256: 9cf74d11022ff173632601166e7f70345c71f03e01c21b40f3e6e24bfbf8faad
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open defined name, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The presence of a macro-enable lure further supports this, as it's a common technique to bypass security measures. The embedded URLs likely serve as download locations for secondary payloads. The XLM macros are too complex to fully analyze statically, but their presence and the lure suggest a downloader or initial access mechanism.

Heuristics 4

  • 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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — context-specific rules above attribute URLs they actually evaluated; this rule lists URLs that were present in the bytes but were not otherwise tied to a specific finding.
    URL https://silvertoncc.com/ys1Btp80hx/th.html
    • https://christleadersworld.com/1TaIPHnbwbNV/th.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
740337535414e50f998f7a71055f9de0e2208abc42faca490883ba1d9c48deb1
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8349 bytes