Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis — malicious · b16c02c4065dcbd5

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

27.0 KB Created: 2021-07-29 19:03:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-19

MD5: b65243b247ea234a9673c28ecc6a03fd SHA-1: 8fc3c3d681f80c7942d3839f5ecadc885618df47 SHA-256: b16c02c4065dcbd5e55df398f9250401a9e6557e697014885705497e10f45f92

182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to enable macros. Heuristics indicate the use of PowerShell and a downloaded executable from the embedded URL http://dastr.axwebsite.com/bin.exe. The macro likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 6

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.
Reference to PowerShell high SC_STR_POWERSHELL

Reference to PowerShell
LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND

Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
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 http://dastr.axwebsite.com/bin.exe

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_macros.txt` `bad67d6fd5d6122d8e01c9a5b0754379d7e4e17d44c2d36b18db667e35871c52`	xlm-macro	oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing)	1032 bytes

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