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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a96501ad794ca24e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

106.7 KB Created: 1996-12-17 01:32:42 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 6a3c6334d2f74145f214fb411320c469 SHA-1: b896a8c1362b07592120553fb7bc4a080699c685 SHA-256: a96501ad794ca24ed53beecebb88837fc43cbcba22e723da94f0435b871860c7
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel spreadsheet exhibiting an OLE slack anomaly and XOR-encoded strings, indicating obfuscation. The presence of XOR-encoded strings suggests an attempt to hide malicious code or data. While no specific VBA or script content was extracted, the heuristics point towards a malicious Excel document likely designed to exploit a vulnerability or deliver a secondary payload. The XOR key 0xE6 is a primary indicator of the obfuscation method used.

Heuristics 2

  • XOR-encoded strings (key 0xE6) critical SC_XOR_ENCODED
    Found 1 Windows library/API name(s) XOR-encoded with single-byte key 0xE6: 'shell32.dll'
  • OLE document has large unaccounted-for region high OLE_SLACK_ANOMALY
    OLE file is 109,278 bytes but its declared streams total only 24,565 bytes — 84,713 bytes (78%) live in unallocated sector slack. This is the canonical hiding place for pre-macro-era Office exploit payloads (XOR-encoded shellcode reached via a parser pointer-corruption bug in the document structure).