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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ce02033f92d2acef…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

370.0 KB Created: 2018-12-10 14:35:46 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel@ഀꌃ邕ǔ@ᰆǗ
MD5: af9ea056772af89f2f01c961e46a8255 SHA-1: 3c1868aeb31321485f5ba90c566a9a1757cb8eeb SHA-256: ce02033f92d2acef752f129963acc1e34a00521ad120258685cc52f98b3a603e
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell

This Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open macro that uses ShellExecute and Windows Script Host, indicating it's designed to download and execute a second-stage payload. The document body presents a lure to enable content, which is a common tactic for macro-based malware. The reconstructed string 'ws' from the macro likely forms part of a command to execute a script.

Heuristics 8

  • 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 with dangerous formula APIs critical 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • 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://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922228166288871457/922425125037555782/QEJJOLhgVnxmasniggas.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922250597602852925/922430559307833374/EnWCFcxmasniggas.bin
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/922228166288871457/922424996389871616/Weoxpxmasniggas.bin

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
c9c634aea274fb5e4f285ebd627b760d2370a6eb4c1cc0605e406c86c4d340af		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 217396 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.