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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d6cb36f3a4977afd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

185.5 KB Created: 2020-07-01 23:17:53 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 45d5b39294843d0953fb52a5fb80d144 SHA-1: 7e714bd897d55b422f2ee6ea3af793cb0b4852ee SHA-256: d6cb36f3a4977afd13f8c45bfa7090c7bb6717fb417bc7c80822dc9361060e0a
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 PowerShell

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, including the RUN function, which is often used to execute arbitrary commands. The macro sheet also contains environment evasion techniques. While no specific URLs or hashes were extracted, the presence of these indicators strongly suggests the file is designed to download and execute a secondary 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.
  • 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open environment-evasion close gate critical OLE_XLM_ENVIRONMENT_EVASION_CLOSE
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet auto-executes environment checks with GET.WORKSPACE / GET.WINDOW, then shows a fake corruption/error message and closes the workbook when the host fails those checks. This is a malware sandbox-evasion pattern, even when the later payload stage is hidden behind obfuscated defined-name flow.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4ede59fba6b771b6c3c0e3eaa946d7b4281a6313472b2bafb22aebc48d94c54a		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 61521 bytes

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