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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b12cd6f97db393a6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

76.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 16aa6d481301aa7def9e47f715932d0f SHA-1: 4904bc4ef491d45d81b149f5c8b4954af94e81bd SHA-256: b12cd6f97db393a69f97b844704ae47c48a37a198f856be35d0efce3a07fae2e
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet (XLM) that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute. It contains a lure to enable macros by impersonating DocuSign. The macro sheet contains strings that appear to be arguments for Windows utilities like 'rundll32' and 'RLDownloadToFileA', suggesting it attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of the listed URLs. The specific URLs are: cooperationoffense.com/vitaotme/, goscrawny.com/kfjzyxi/, goaqaba.com/ccwidd/, virtuebeauty.org/srquxjdyy/, and calfgiant.com/swsejhakai/.

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
  • Document signing service impersonation lure medium SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE
    Document impersonates DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or a similar signing service in a signing-request context

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
75fe9d9f30fafc4f16de9f927e37480eac5c8eb4707ad096446109a83ec6c9ee
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2255 bytes