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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a0f94332a73e8a69…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

62.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 437b332d9f21101ffe4110b8cc7fcfea SHA-1: 6ee3e9f9ab0c516dd41d021badf779e58728798d SHA-256: a0f94332a73e8a6959698fafa7c4e30fd6f7f0cfaf2a3359390524649c4c40a0
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File T1204 User Execution T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains a Workbook_Open macro and references to ShellExecute and URLDownloadToFile APIs, indicating it is designed to download and execute additional content. The document body explicitly contains a URL, which is also listed as an embedded URL. The presence of an enable-lure heuristic further suggests the document is intended to trick the user into enabling macros to facilitate the download and execution of a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 8

  • Reference to URLDownloadToFile API critical SC_STR_URLDOWNLOAD
    Reference to URLDownloadToFile API
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs high OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • 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
  • 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://blog.vokasidev.com/crun20.gif�
    • http://blog.vokasidev.com/crun20.gif

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
d4222e1ad83b892546402a65bce1342319760d5f0e17d0c73ae5f07e792beb86
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 9447 bytes
macros.bas
c29faf2da8b6b84c63880f8f3ff09f138acdaa94ad9406cab75b546ae0e54428
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 979 bytes