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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3ecc200ce686bed9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2021-05-29
MD5: e4320ae180ca82fe573a656265bcf133 SHA-1: 29c5cbde8b36064894ff74930e6f2ef195150d2f SHA-256: 3ecc200ce686bed907d0c058f03ae75aacc81a9ea7406ff8c7f952c13cf3e2d1
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains a lure to enable macros, a common technique for malware delivery. The embedded URLs likely point to malicious payloads or further stages of the attack. No specific script content was extracted, but the presence of XLM macros and the lure strongly suggest a downloader or droppper functionality.

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://aravindanavada.com/AHt5r3T0VSlq/solo.html In document text (OLE body)
    • https://mrcrgroup.com/sOyQynNJYBY/solo.htmlIn document text (OLE body)