Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis — malicious · 3a0afb56cf56d326

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

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

MD5: 57b9dbf033a5ec452bfdfdfaa6e7c590 SHA-1: e1e5192d24f486d7cd34b2e2ed235a013f0e043b SHA-256: 3a0afb56cf56d326e6113dd8f47dec852663a010e64c29daaafa87849d49a287

182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1071.001 Web Protocols

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. The macros utilize WinAPI functions such as URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA to download and execute a payload from the URL http://162.241.115.60/q/1.gif. This indicates a downloader or droppper functionality.

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 http://162.241.115.60/q/1.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_sheet_00.bin` `88bbfd9c46e480ac4f7ac203afcf9ebcf31b2422c88e27a92bef8993e8f14c40`	xlm-macrosheet	OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin	194725 bytes

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