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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 17a1ed8dac46543b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

380.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 713d21d570f0a94f6f81f72bf1b6e9c0 SHA-1: f99c9d709a9730e76cdfb2c7f4ddedfcfeb548d8 SHA-256: 17a1ed8dac46543b0322951672034835ac017860ca9d036d201922bbb05fd748
102 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros, including an Auto_Open entry, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The macros are designed to bypass security by luring the user to enable them. Once enabled, the XLM macros likely execute commands to download and run a second-stage payload from one of the two embedded URLs, such as 'https://hermescomm.net/x9NvrhL0/lena.html'. The presence of XLM macros and the lure to enable them strongly suggests a macro-based downloader attack.

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://hermescomm.net/x9NvrhL0/lena.html
    • https://asistenciajuridicaintegral.com/6YiCkNix5/lena.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
be629cb484f8d82e38c4234ddbad4f1755e762b9c1c8359642d99f8c77e6e858
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8812 bytes