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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e3ca9c8d4c603fbc…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 5eb1286e5b1b4892f85de016fbf6d56e SHA-1: 3872874009bc336de318ff3a3eade6f292cfd813 SHA-256: e3ca9c8d4c603fbc5489313c18e122f0b974d589ed1f176cfa077037ff6077ec
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open defined name, indicating that macros will execute automatically upon opening. The document also contains an 'enable macros' lure to bypass security settings. The embedded URLs likely serve as download locations for a second-stage payload. The XLM macros themselves were not detailed enough to extract specific actions, but the presence of the lure and auto-execution entry strongly suggests a downloader or droppper functionality.

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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — context-specific rules above attribute URLs they actually evaluated; this rule lists URLs that were present in the bytes but were not otherwise tied to a specific finding.
    URL https://mayread.com/aXfFF8qdsV/th.html
    • https://tpcsv.neosj.why3s.tw/XjHoDakG/th.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
7758cbebef832a37ce0a327fd7d893202195f03ba9b854edef74b19dbb11678f
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8349 bytes