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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4d3168ab2f213af2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2021-05-26
MD5: fd0115443f14670adc9ff48044b6c59c SHA-1: 2e4a736fc1730ec532f488d71a08e5771d13b0e7 SHA-256: 4d3168ab2f213af25764448f840c04bcb355407b4bfe5e598d385cfccbd878a2
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains embedded URLs and a heuristic firing indicates the document attempts to lure the user into enabling macros. No scripts were extracted from this sample, but the presence of XLM macros and the lure suggest it is likely a downloader or initial access vector.

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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