Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis — malicious · 175aee897458bad9

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

24.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300

MD5: 0a2fe6b481de3336d8c194456b374e93 SHA-1: df4c9352e0138beafa4f44b3ce986983b6b6c5ce SHA-256: 175aee897458bad9fb434d2fad7ab7de6e79ded609723736693e05ae4faa8bf9

120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet that contains strings indicative of downloading and executing a file, such as URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA. This strongly suggests the macro's purpose is to download and run a second-stage payload from a remote location. The presence of WinAPI strings and the Excel 4.0 macro sheet firing confirm this malicious intent.

Heuristics 2

Excel 4.0 macro sheet (1 sheet(s)) critical OOXML_XLM_MACROSHEET

Spreadsheet contains an Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet — XLM was a major Office malware vector during 2020-2022 and evaded many VBA-focused controls before Microsoft tightened XLM defaults. Even legitimate XLM use is rare in modern workbooks. The macro sheet is stored as XLSB/BIFF12 binary content, which many XML-only OOXML scanners miss.
Binary XLM macro sheet with WinAPI/download strings critical OOXML_XLM_BINARY_WINAPI_STRINGS

Excel 4.0 macro sheet is stored as BIFF12/XLSB binary data and contains Win32 download or process-execution API strings such as URLDownloadToFileA, ShellExecuteA, or CreateDirectoryA. These strings are high-signal in XLM macro sheets and catch payload-download macros that XML-formula scanners cannot parse.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_sheet_00.bin` `99a6a52acb8f5c734f6d86faf89e0637a94ac99f953aa583d2658b47d2e1f9b9`	xlm-macrosheet	OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin	194023 bytes

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