Malicious Office (OOXML) / .XLSX — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2af69dfde5d5a2a5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

26.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: e50c29bd7801e381469107447ccdec2f SHA-1: 9f2c9e9fa514e6f8f7e9efd5ae951a3a4db7cb93 SHA-256: 2af69dfde5d5a2a5631bfbbdfea0a4bb0b218a21b4389356603e5a868d92db8c
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet, which is a critical finding. The macro sheet includes strings related to WinAPI functions such as URLDownloadToFileA, DownloadToFileA, and ShellExecuteA, indicating it attempts to download and execute a file. The macro reconstructs the URL 'https://mfruits.co/ds/4.gif' from its cell array, which is likely used to fetch a second-stage payload. The presence of these WinAPI calls and the reconstructed URL strongly suggest a downloader attack pattern.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (1 URL) critical OOXML_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell) or inside an embedded HTA that uses VBScript Chr()/&-concat obfuscation. The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF12 record stream of every worksheet and macrosheet part and decoding RK/inline-string cells in both row-major and column-major order.
  • 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://mfruits.co/ds/4.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
3cc9fed58ee9e6f90f441cf973e0eb01b2c7575a317a07b7ad67aefbf5f18ddf		 xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 197528 bytes

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