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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 beb10ebe9c50b64a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

82.0 KB Created: 2020-06-22 16:20:38 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a4824cda0d25d70efe66ea039e639ab4 SHA-1: 96839ccd5375a672ab91eb68b8c355354ac115b7 SHA-256: beb10ebe9c50b64a5ed3ac389970bca007efc4003aac0152955cfc43d14553cb
160 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-enabled workbook. It contains an Auto_Open macro that is designed to evade detection and prompt the user to enable content. The document body explicitly instructs the user to "Enable Editing" and "Enable Content", which is a common social engineering tactic to bypass macro security. The XLM macros are likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, although the specific actions are not fully detailed in the provided script excerpt.

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 environment-evasion close gate critical OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_CLOSE
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes environment checks with GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW, then shows a fake corruption/error message and closes the workbook when the host fails those checks. This is a malware sandbox-evasion pattern, even when the later payload stage is hidden behind obfuscated defined-name flow.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
231d6c285b56bd7f3e23997ee1832d9d65a01bf8fa340c40dd94e7525bbbd842		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 30124 bytes

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