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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a5501bdc5f9be8a2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2026-05-24
MD5: a2101c63bddbd6a18928e0fc79a71008 SHA-1: 85710d786d4fe10f829fc2303368a6096b5beecf SHA-256: a5501bdc5f9be8a27b43df77d8168df914dae09c287569d035f5c0024674831d
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious File T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious Macro

The file is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro-enabled spreadsheet. It contains a lure to enable macros, a common technique for malware droppers. The embedded URLs likely point to malicious payloads or phishing sites. No scripts were extracted from this sample, limiting further analysis of the macro's specific actions.

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)