Solved Question file malware or false positive?

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classicaran

Level 2
Is the Burn_Card_Maker.exe file real malware or a false positive?



 
I don't have that exact sample to test it out. But based on the report, AV vendors already know and seen this file since last year and did not detect it.
 
The file I just downloaded from sourceforge appears to be benign, it would be interesting to see the Sirius verdict of the one you downloaded that has a different hash.

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File path: c:\users\dan\desktop\burn_card_maker.exe
File hash: e2410bc263fc06076ecc3619af4c4f50a96d54edee0b00b2b5fb0679394aea9e
File size: 3.01 MB
File publisher: This file is a signable file type but has not been digitally signed.
WhitelistCloud verdict: Safe

Final Verdict: Safe with 92% confidence.

=== Analysis Summary ===
The file “burn_card_maker.exe” is an MFC/Win32 GUI utility whose sole purpose is to write Amlogic bootloader images to SD cards (“card-making” mode). It contains no networking, no process injection, no anti-debugging, and exports nothing that could be used as a loader. While the entropy of several sections is moderately elevated (≈ 5–6.3), the overlay region is zero-length (no appended junk/encrypted blob) and ImportCrypt is 0 – it does not load any cryptographic libraries such as ADVAPI32!Crypt* or bcrypt. Imports are limited to Win32 GUI, GDI+, Shell, COM and simple registry helpers – all expected for a self-contained Windows utility. RequestedExecutionLevel=“requireAdministrator” is legitimate: SD-card firmware tools need raw-disk access, hence UAC elevation. File date (2015-10-19) and static metadata point to an old, but official, Amlogic factory support tool distributed to device OEMs. No digital signature is typical for low-level vendor utilities of that era (and the binary was never re-released on Windows Update or Microsoft WHQL pipelines). WhitelistCloud tags it “Safe” and we concur.

=== Detailed Analysis ===
1. Core functionality indicators
- Strings such as “SecureBoot SD bootloader”, “Erase bootloader”, “Erase Flash”, “Formating sdcard”, “sparse”, “image.cfg”, “aml_sdc_burn”, “bootloader.PARTITION”, and progress-dlg traces show a narrow, hardware-specific burn-card utility.
- The binary carries a resource section that includes UI bitmaps and an MFC manifest – consistent with a small desktop flashing tool rather than a dropper or RAT.
- No base64, no URL or IP literals, no suspicious pseudo-C2 artefacts, and no process-hollowing or reflective-injection hints.

2. Import & library profile
- A very high 600 imports were scraped by the PE parser, but inspection shows they are almost exclusively user32/gdi32/comdlg32/shell32 OLE automation and GUI helpers plus ADVAPI32 registry functions.
- Notable absences: no Winsock, WinInet, Urlmon, Ws2_32, or HTTP APIs; no CreateRemoteThread, VirtualAllocEx, WriteProcessMemory, SetWindowsHookEx; no CryptoAPI or BCrypt; no NT-undocumented NTAPI stubs. The “DangerousImportedLibrariesNormalized : 30.47” figure seems inflated by over-counting benign GDI/OLE libraries – real risk primitives are missing.
- COM usage (CoCreateInstance, DragDrop, OleInitialize) is justified for file-browse dialogs and clipboard bitmap handling for embedded logo graphics.

3. Section / entropy anomalies
- Section1 (.text) 6.16 entropy is slightly high but typical for C++/MFC code compiled with optimisations and linked with static GDI+; no packed section tricks (no raw/virt mismatch, no section with execute+write).
- Zero entropy and zero size for sections 6–11, and overlay entropy 0 and overlay size 0, rule out appended encrypted payloads often seen in trojanised flashers.

4. ASLR/DEP & runtime
- Binary opts into DEP and ASLR (DllCharacteristics 0x8140) – an indicator of legitimate, post-2010 compiler defaults, not malware packed with old toolchains.
- No CFG/SEHOP Guard flags (LoadConfigGuardFlags 0) is expected for VS2010-era builds.

5. Locale metadata
- VersionInfoLanguage: Chinese (Simplified, China) and Copyright 2013 Amlogic, matching Shenzhen-based Amlogic design house – plausible legitimate provenance rather than locale spoofing.

6. Digital signature / trust
- Unsigned, but this is common for factory support utilities distributed inside board support packages; absence of signature alone is not enough to classify as malicious.

7. WhitelistCloud
- Reputable reputation service classifies the hash as safe; nothing in the static features contradicts that verdict.

Likely software type / purpose
“Burn_Card_Maker” appears to be Amlogic’s OEM utility for preparing bootable SD cards used to flash Android or Linux onto set-top/OTT boxes, smart TVs and development boards. Functionality is limited to disk imaging, partition parsing, progress tracking and simple SD formatting – a standard vendor support tool rather than malware.

Malware type: N/A
Malware name: N/A
Final verdict: Safe with 92% confidence.
 
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Why is it that even though this file is on my PC, a full scan by Microsoft Defender and a scan by Malwarebytes Free don't detect it and say it's clean? I sent the my file to Kaspersky and the result was...
Burn_Card_Maker.exe
 
Where did you see this infected file and its hash?

Did you download it from the link I provided? I remember that when I downloaded from that link, some software removed or cleaned some files from my antivirus.

But the file that remained was the one I tested in VT at the beginning of the thread.

my file: VirusTotal

i downloaded this link:

 
Where did you see this infected file and its hash?

Event: Malicious object detected
User type: Initiator
Component: Malware Scan
Result: Detected
Result description: Detected
Type: Virus
Name: Virus.Win32.Nimnul.a
Precision: Exactly
Threat level: High
Object type: File
Object name: Burn_Card_Maker.exe
Object path: C:\Users\HARLAN4096\Downloads\1.Amlogic.zip//1.Amlogic/1.2Amlogic-SD upgrade
SHA256 of an object: E41FE7F90D77C9CC8ACC2AF6DE76900C6F067F8F6A2D607BC1D7891809E4DF37
MD5 of an object: D6F8697C99F91D98AE39ADFEFE887CD3

Reason: Expert analysis
Databases release date: Today, 17/11/2025 14:49:00

my file: VirusTotal -> That one is the false positive.
 

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