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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e267772d9b6ef77b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

581.9 KB Created: 1999-12-24 16:36:33 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 340eb7391cfd1fb597a618ef7da9d8df SHA-1: 16bcfb5ed246702bfeadb873db7265f00400b893 SHA-256: e267772d9b6ef77b9464e235177a9fe106d2945ce8cfec915325805046099962
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing with Other T1059.005 Visual Basic T1137.001 DLL Search Order Hijacking T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing both VBA and XLM macros, with a Workbook_Open subroutine triggering the execution of a game-like interaction. The heuristics indicate OLE slack anomalies and an appended payload, suggesting the file is designed to deliver malicious content. The VBA macro obfuscation and the presence of both macro types point towards a downloader or droppper functionality, though the exact payload delivery mechanism is not fully discernible from the provided scripts.

Heuristics 6

  • OLE document has large unaccounted-for region high OLE_SLACK_ANOMALY
    OLE file is 595,859 bytes but its declared streams total only 184,311 bytes — 411,548 bytes (69%) live in unallocated sector slack. This is the canonical hiding place for pre-macro-era Office exploit payloads (XOR-encoded shellcode reached via a parser pointer-corruption bug in the document structure).
  • OLE file has appended executable-looking payload bytes high OLE_APPENDED_PAYLOAD
    OLE compound file contains a large high-entropy region beyond the declared major streams and that region includes shellcode, PE, or loader API markers. This is a payload-carrier signal, not a specific CVE attribution by itself.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
c2d076a6e609a8b33579240c4c97ddb741702fb224c691665176231441d0ac2f		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 17509 bytes
macros.bas
b8e75b4695b686847be9d9baa24cfcf21fa80f406a3ea02644f012785524ac06		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 27433 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 30 Chr/ChrW string-construction calls.

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