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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f7ec4b22e9fa566b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 918c90ce1ab4439bead9576db680560b SHA-1: a8cff9affa9f84ae3462117c0c053441c7f83a66 SHA-256: f7ec4b22e9fa566b66cc3ed4a0c70e6d48d34bee77dd606d9ff498c0eb3b1063
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. A heuristic also detected a macro/content-enable lure, suggesting the document prompts the user to enable macros. The embedded URLs likely serve as download locations for a second-stage payload. The XLM macros are likely responsible for downloading and executing the payload.

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