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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 edf6acade04c3dc2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

70.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-07
MD5: 2dfdd96d0ca0cda2420d76cf5116e3c0 SHA-1: 18d0e1e86329e0b0950cd808ccb1444a852d5f4e SHA-256: edf6acade04c3dc26cc6a984f8e98fca03b719690c7352404fe795dff038036b
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File

The critical heuristics OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros designed to execute automatically upon opening. The extracted URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The macro uses the RUN function, which is a dangerous API call in this context.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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
f83c1e7392699acb02f69ec3ffd4b4b11e29d3a6381df4b6ea4e60977f47b16d
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7590 bytes