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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c6c3a51ee0977c17…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

62.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a431dd18b635170f4f1ccad238dede24 SHA-1: 69600d44463602ee234c2f354bf1fa50aaba3472 SHA-256: c6c3a51ee0977c1764d9b60b7a9c67ea2f3d405b3758d172a42b7ad3c870d934
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.004 PowerShell T1218.011 Signed Binary Proxy Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing both XLM and VBA macros. The presence of Workbook_Open and Auto_Open macros, along with heuristics indicating the use of ShellExecute and URLDownloadToFile APIs, suggests that the macro is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload. The document body contains a URL which is likely used for this purpose. The lure to enable macros is a common technique for initial access.

Heuristics 8

  • Reference to URLDownloadToFile API critical SC_STR_URLDOWNLOAD
    Reference to URLDownloadToFile API
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • 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.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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 https://simplygrocery.simplypos.org.in/crun20.gif�
    • https://simplygrocery.simplypos.org.in/crun20.gif

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
d4222e1ad83b892546402a65bce1342319760d5f0e17d0c73ae5f07e792beb86		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 9447 bytes
macros.bas
c29faf2da8b6b84c63880f8f3ff09f138acdaa94ad9406cab75b546ae0e54428		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 979 bytes

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