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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e1617d2d6174a5c5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

103.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f50f08ac332f929f4cb348c8fc987166 SHA-1: 2364945f37620f310981eb3bc9ec65698a801cfb SHA-256: e1617d2d6174a5c5dfd98d92f238d5f8ecbb8ef5071937fbbfc413ce6b0a5114
80 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro. This macro is designed to execute dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function, which is used to download and execute a payload from the URL http://padgettconsultants.ca/tau.gif. The document also contains text that instructs the user to enable macros, a common social engineering tactic to bypass security measures. The presence of the XLM macro and the explicit use of the RUN function strongly indicate a downloader or droppper functionality.

Heuristics 4

  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs high 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.
  • 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 http://padgettconsultants.ca/tau.gif�
    • http://padgettconsultants.ca/tau.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
878a3ffd2192869b3e95af1a302960a3b5d7de3cf1ea8c3286d25d53b5877fc4		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2066 bytes

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