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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 298ecd9dd11b8b5b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2021-05-26
MD5: 2b766ff330d1fbc8d4e704882368f073 SHA-1: 6fef41f39334d75a61dd0c05923086155dd2c975 SHA-256: 298ecd9dd11b8b5b83429595654eaf3f4b37e72776e55ab4614f572915dcd644
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File

The file is an Excel XLS document containing an XLM macro sheet, indicated by the OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN heuristic. The SE_ENABLE_LURE heuristic confirms that the document contains instructions to enable macros, a typical social engineering tactic for malware delivery. No scripts were extracted, and the document body was not available, limiting further analysis of the macro's specific function. The embedded URLs are likely used to download a secondary payload.

Heuristics 5

  • XLM Auto_Open workbook with payload URL or enable-content lure critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_PAYLOAD_LURE
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet with Auto_Open / Auto_Close and also exposes a payload URL or enable-content lure in the OLE bytes. This combination is a high-confidence XLM downloader/social-engineering pattern even when formula recovery cannot decode the full macro chain.
  • Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet uses dangerous capability functions high OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN_STATIC
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet whose formulas reference two or more dangerous capability functions (e.g. CALL into a Win32 API such as URLDownloadToFile, EXEC to launch a process, REGISTER an external DLL procedure, or FWRITE/FOPEN to drop a file) with an Auto_Open / Auto_Close auto-execution name. This is the canonical XLM downloader/dropper shape and is recovered directly from the BIFF records, so it fires even when the full macro chain cannot be deobfuscated.
  • 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://rathnakumar.com/BuTxTGO63eD/solo.html In document text (OLE body)
    • https://maidzonemobile.com/Voy4zCN8y1/solo.htmlIn document text (OLE body)

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