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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ae77e8a7ff8f741d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

233.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: ebe4eae535d943f9145d9395649b281b SHA-1: 72b41d1da80745cf5186484f314d3b7c4d942508 SHA-256: ae77e8a7ff8f741ded073015589f0a0158cb0e30f8b0f112abfa161fc0ee155f
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 PowerShell

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open function, which is a critical finding. The presence of dangerous formula APIs like RUN indicates the macro is designed to execute external code. The document body's instructions to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' are typical social engineering lures for macro-enabled documents. The XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion HALT gate suggests the macro attempts to detect and avoid analysis environments.

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.
  • 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion HALT gate high OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_HALT
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes multiple GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW environment checks and halts execution when the host does not match the expected user environment. This is a common sandbox-evasion pattern in XLM malware and is stronger than a bare XLM macro-sheet indicator.
  • 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
424e5a73921b36ae2fcccfabe7634fc2390d60e0345bb839295cf08e361889d2		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 328631 bytes

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