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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c634b28e4a3d2d7a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.8 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: ce571c91789983cd18f3a785b5547ba9 SHA-1: 1712f15dd1cdadca7b3b87d2c2a508e541641341 SHA-256: c634b28e4a3d2d7a5596c0e00762ab2f761ad8f6c9c0bdccb728430bc79fe25e
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious Macro T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet (XLM) that contains an Auto_Open macro. The macro attempts to bypass security by instructing the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content'. The extracted macro code includes a command that reconstructs the URL "http://0xc12a24f5/cc.html" and executes it using 'cmd /c'. This indicates the document is a downloader designed to fetch and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL.

Heuristics 3

  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
0807f652a36752efcd354ce3c536f2fe7ed4cd53a3ff1787c33acb378dda90a0
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 1073 bytes