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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c9ea1562c9efcbd4…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b36c3cf8cb3cc0ba055c7da859921375 SHA-1: 1dc7f1a2159f735b2e568d47d60791c4034d5852 SHA-256: c9ea1562c9efcbd4a442fe8ee26640c72bb36ca327da360fac5614b9cb67c79c
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open defined name, indicating that macros will execute automatically upon opening. The document body and heuristics suggest a lure to enable macros. The extracted URLs are likely used to download a second-stage payload. The XLM macros are too truncated to fully analyze their specific actions, but the presence of Auto_Open and the embedded URLs strongly suggests a downloader pattern.

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
  • 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://stateoftheartacademy.com.br/E4V8njAb2/ue.html
    • https://dsafarm.com/h03itpGP/ue.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
e808156aa76369abc653ef5da0e4637a11444d74c8ce4e627b8f3942d60b3178
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8209 bytes