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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a0362be648ebb922…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

59.5 KB First seen: 2023-01-16
MD5: 7c853ab182e0e0a51baa85ba460ddf51 SHA-1: b865efd764549e7e64eaa37ae67a977958a5fcec SHA-256: a0362be648ebb92266bb64410e429350aefbddb0af74d7e89bea23cfbe75aa64
320 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros and VBA macros, with a Workbook_Open subroutine that calls the Shell() function. This indicates an attempt to execute arbitrary commands, likely to download and run a secondary payload. The presence of a 'password-protected archive lure' heuristic suggests the document is designed to trick the user into opening an encrypted file, a common tactic for evading initial security scans.

Heuristics 8

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • ClamAV: Xls.Trojan.Generic-9994593-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Trojan.Generic-9994593-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Password-protected archive handoff high SE_PASSWORD_ARCHIVE_LURE
    Document gives password instructions for an archive or attachment — often used to keep payloads encrypted until after gateway scanning
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
6aa1322fe57a74d6f4413ff9e0cb705f9c3e3d8252bf4d98e906164ef656f7d7		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4433 bytes
macros.bas
8d830018a3f9f2ec893275bddb6e3f594331cfcaf89685dbe9c2cb77e5554818		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 4581 bytes

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