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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a00aa9a32710bc6b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

373.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-13
MD5: 2e14cf2e0762d387ce4db95e9cb50fde SHA-1: 74b83c10343304d55cd2d4625f1e519a1d29e497 SHA-256: a00aa9a32710bc6b728fca8bbd6a5f57bf0d27d6d359a0ceddaef7ab0f10b7ea
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros, including an Auto_Open entry, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The presence of a 'Macro/content-enable lure' heuristic suggests the document is designed to prompt the user to enable macros. The extracted URL 'http://wyhfi19vkwt03hcrle.xyz/apple.gif' is likely used to download a secondary payload. The XLM macros are designed to execute automatically upon opening the document.

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
c2dc2d27a90e87fdcc044c59aed45fe776e1b180d63fa23ffc4ef09a815d1305
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4016 bytes