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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b44abf3f0d433bc9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

380.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: e9493351de356de1e37dcaea069b3698 SHA-1: 07838f1d612f60da25314ce729b1b0e397489c18 SHA-256: b44abf3f0d433bc9fcdea54e13fd005e333d94be9810221209ae8a57bd0ac46a
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 macro that is designed to execute when the workbook is opened. The document body and extracted macro fragments indicate that the script attempts to download a file from one of the provided URLs and execute it, likely as a second-stage payload. The presence of an 'enable macros' lure further supports this malicious intent.

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://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