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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fdb823c5b81ce56a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

367.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 41dcc8b326836129b163997e48007d51 SHA-1: a1960df848fcf1144b02046a86a5a6a15ac93176 SHA-256: fdb823c5b81ce56ae552534ef39249dee0f8ed7ce2a832a43bbad2f090815773
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains an Auto_Open macro, which is a common technique for executing malicious code upon opening the document. The document body and extracted URLs indicate an attempt to lure the user into enabling macros, likely to download and execute a second-stage payload from the URLs: https://smartpalakatva.com/edQsUZOLlE/th.html and https://pilstlcommodities.com/Ov4FlB3lpy/th.html. The XLM macros themselves are truncated, but the presence of Auto_Open and the embedded URLs strongly suggest 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 — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://smartpalakatva.com/edQsUZOLlE/th.html
    • https://pilstlcommodities.com/Ov4FlB3lpy/th.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
e61304013e31eadd8bf35fc5d3e6cbadd61463966f2a2d09ae24f65eb0ee3106
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8349 bytes