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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3fbf31dddbe71fec…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

26.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: 9283881617b5114626e228b33ef77c71 SHA-1: b1aefe99002ab83ba22dbfcf98c1c0b9276c7595 SHA-256: 3fbf31dddbe71fecc3e8c6a635dde5bf7c75dd005bf7dea5010593b319dc300d
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. The macros contain strings like URLDownloadToFileA, DownloadToFileA, and ShellExecuteA, indicating an intent to download and execute a payload. The reconstructed URL https://djjmeets.com/ds/4.gif is likely the source of this payload. The presence of these indicators suggests 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 https://djjmeets.com/ds/4.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
21ed6bf2f991b7b9410faa7d7fa52a8c1740b2553460558ed0ce9ae046c291fc
xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 197537 bytes