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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e289990f4476fe74…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

525.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2026-05-23
MD5: 3dd63e2d2bbcba93ce504868dbaf8d9b SHA-1: 00dace6c55bbbd0b116b7b43b0d84896897a5054 SHA-256: e289990f4476fe74a64709c8d1449e72865003e35f47eb7be3eb73a6cf660adc
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 sheet, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The presence of a macro-enable lure further supports this, as it's a common tactic to bypass security measures. The embedded URLs likely serve as download locations for secondary payloads.

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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