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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ff41f36465780e08…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

62.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: e2453eeec65e00bf537d794ce56ed4dd SHA-1: 04dfbf2c3a62aaa7607c937dc1b46213ff278ec8 SHA-256: ff41f36465780e08b4def9e56eb6cf4746e591936cedc966e2c079d9d60174cd
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1059.004 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1071.001 Web Protocols T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The presence of an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet with an Auto_Open function, alongside a Workbook_Open VBA macro, strongly indicates a malicious intent to execute code upon opening the document. The heuristic firings for ShellExecute and URLDownloadToFile APIs, combined with the embedded URL, suggest the macro's purpose is to download and run a secondary payload. The document body also contains the same URL, reinforcing its role in the attack chain.

Heuristics 8

  • Reference to URLDownloadToFile API critical SC_STR_URLDOWNLOAD
    Reference to URLDownloadToFile API
  • Reference to ShellExecute API high SC_STR_SHELLEXEC
    Reference to ShellExecute API
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs high 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.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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 http://blog.vokasidev.com/crun20.gif�
    • http://blog.vokasidev.com/crun20.gif

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
d4222e1ad83b892546402a65bce1342319760d5f0e17d0c73ae5f07e792beb86		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 9447 bytes
macros.bas
c29faf2da8b6b84c63880f8f3ff09f138acdaa94ad9406cab75b546ae0e54428		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 979 bytes

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