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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a39895e4aa0cee86…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

221.5 KB Created: 2021-02-06 22:23:31 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c719a4ff64138d3f051623d7aebbbcfd SHA-1: f1bcb2b2ecffaf15db8e9ab8987bf777dc9a7338 SHA-256: a39895e4aa0cee86ec0f8e90d7a7ea96980e1b1c17c502ffbea4281f84eacaf1
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File

The critical heuristics OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN indicate the presence of an Excel 4.0 macro with an Auto_Open entry that uses the RUN function. The extracted macro script confirms this, showing a complex string concatenation to construct a PowerShell command. This command is designed to download 'as.exe' from 'http://45.153.203.134/as.exe', save it as 'ms.exe' in the user's AppData directory, and then execute it. This indicates a downloader or droppper functionality.

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.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical 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.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
b3427f55c2730099adfad80d649f612850535cf2602ebdef00f83f88befac90f
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1242 bytes