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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c7abbc4c5a340413…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

62.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 1a1fe076162200967d79855622f13cf4 SHA-1: 34feb2662111657d05d8061ed9b7fa06dcb27565 SHA-256: c7abbc4c5a3404136c0dfc13b5ed6b43607bd9af075d2d00fcb2e261396260c2
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet with a Workbook_Open macro, designed to execute automatically. Heuristics indicate the use of ShellExecute and URLDownloadToFile APIs, suggesting the macro attempts to download and run a payload from the embedded URL. The document body also contains the same URL, reinforcing its role in the attack chain. The presence of both XLM and VBA macros, along with the 'enable lure' heuristic, points to a downloader or initial access stage.

Heuristics 9

  • Reference to URLDownloadToFile API critical SC_STR_URLDOWNLOAD
    Reference to URLDownloadToFile API
  • ClamAV: Win.Malware.Agent-9911651-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Win.Malware.Agent-9911651-0
  • 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://staffordhvacservices.com/crun20.gif�
    • https://staffordhvacservices.com/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