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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b824d5d44c827044…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

142.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-31
MD5: a84a83e7d624fc830a6ea544afd334ff SHA-1: e25a2a4f9fcac466e42fef8e850a58d196a16096 SHA-256: b824d5d44c82704484eff17bc68744592c276155e410e92a1b1fd85b01b1ac0b
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that impersonates DocuSign to trick users into enabling macros. The presence of an Auto_Open macro indicates an attempt to automatically execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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
fd395c0d5efe31bc3f4c13f428339dafef8132102e75fdb8cfce92015175af32
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2730 bytes