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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c96606c27caaf863…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2026-05-23
MD5: 838512a53cb9c2b8723f4458326f2590 SHA-1: 0d181d27123a1271239b248cf0e9ec424423ab4a SHA-256: c96606c27caaf8631cf8edf2459049cb58323fa94c7ee8e1064c2030ffc727d8
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet, indicated by the OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN heuristic. It contains embedded URLs and uses a lure to trick the user into enabling macros. The presence of XLM macros and the lure suggest a downloader or initial access payload, but no specific family can be identified.

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)

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