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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ab3658278a976fb0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

373.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 035181eef3d0eaafe8d2cbc2c40cc7a8 SHA-1: 4f005d88269edc7d2e99ecf76efc2bddbacb8638 SHA-256: ab3658278a976fb01fcfae27fd6432515c3f3636cd7376731d6122925a6bfe9b
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro. Heuristics indicate the macro uses dangerous functions such as RUN, suggesting it is designed to execute arbitrary code. The document body contains embedded URLs which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of an 'enable macros' lure further supports this attack pattern.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • 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 https://allproac.com/u8AwHMG0OM/alex.html
    • https://karnafulimarine.com/lmjhxNSMbf/alex.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
7b20680a5c8f61ed44dce4de0580631b9188f0dd2fb85ee91819a05bfb80a422		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 5292 bytes

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