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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ab5f562f4aca5d67…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

349.5 KB Created: 2018-12-06 20:43:11 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-03-04
MD5: bdddfa718c759f628de712aa3cafe606 SHA-1: 57eb27a3595b28c091667c869ca30d6dd0a7cbff SHA-256: ab5f562f4aca5d677a19e06c731493638f465189125050c4cd4a4b25c13df7b4
340 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1218 Signed Binary Proxy Execution

The sample contains VBA macros that are automatically executed upon opening the workbook, as indicated by the Workbook_Open heuristic. The script utilizes WScript.Shell to access the user's 'Templates' directory, suggesting an attempt to download and execute a secondary payload or establish persistence. The high number of heuristic firings related to VBA and WScript.Shell usage, along with the critical Shell() call detection, strongly supports this conclusion.

Heuristics 8

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7471cc58b99b4c5225f2a2a4a93082efd0279e4f8e8e0141a3eab4e467ef419d
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12810 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 shell/COM execution token(s). Carved artifact contains 2 long base64-like blob(s). Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.