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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ab3ae41daf2b24c7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 634d3f5b6778522e93dd8a0aa9afa032 SHA-1: 8c689c470b13ae4c106048ccf345ca828fc52af3 SHA-256: ab3ae41daf2b24c7ff9143eac1e12555ac5ce2183fa263157dd6522864a58e1c
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open defined name, indicating an attempt to automatically execute code upon opening. The presence of an 'enable lure' heuristic suggests the document prompts the user to enable macros. The extracted URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The macro execution and lure technique point to a malicious downloader.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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 — context-specific rules above attribute URLs they actually evaluated; this rule lists URLs that were present in the bytes but were not otherwise tied to a specific finding.
    URL https://smartpalakatva.com/edQsUZOLlE/th.html
    • https://pilstlcommodities.com/Ov4FlB3lpy/th.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
e61304013e31eadd8bf35fc5d3e6cbadd61463966f2a2d09ae24f65eb0ee3106
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8349 bytes