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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d30dca05a381ea0c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

144.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 421de792f2c24cb994f9e9d17729a51a SHA-1: 92001d386aefaecda416eebb1396867a5a86a425 SHA-256: d30dca05a381ea0ca9740238fc7b50e5174785a17dd0efe1418d0038a99bc486
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled workbook that attempts to lure the user into enabling macros by impersonating a document signing service. The presence of an Auto_Open macro indicates that malicious code will execute upon opening the document. The extracted URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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
  • Document signing service impersonation lure medium SE_DOCUSIGN_LURE
    Document impersonates DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or a similar signing service in a signing-request context

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4fe8a5e8d044300f6cea871b68533e8e735bcb3995124abd360e573c5009f2ee
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4464 bytes