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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b61ae5b6a687b1a9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

368.0 KB Created: 2020-07-10 10:41:45 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f030fcf4d8152a7f6e25ebc42bad516f SHA-1: c8b2b0bc752f1a26ca4d9c74eed3ec8ada870a56 SHA-256: b61ae5b6a687b1a94ab933eddbff0e14c0521a4207dff363b150975c7fa54e4d
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function, indicating it likely attempts to execute external code. The document also employs a lure to trick the user into enabling macros by impersonating a document signing service. While no specific URLs were found to be malicious, the presence of the XLM macro and the lure strongly suggest a downloader or initial access pattern. No scripts were extracted, and the document body content was not directly usable for determining intent.

Heuristics 5

  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs high 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.
  • 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
  • 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://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
bbb822b375f7a71da57d853f0b3a9e246a4549e1e8b7b08118589e73ffa81b9e		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 119718 bytes

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