Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis — malicious · 48acb8f45b5f297c

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

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

MD5: 87b395871a6a418fdc365f72d31968af SHA-1: b66678b77076f44c417d11f3da60c725ff7d0cae SHA-256: 48acb8f45b5f297c7bfc12d1e57c0c4ffd93c77e4d894e63be3c87b68c48f463

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 related to WinAPI functions such as URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA, indicating an intent to download and execute a payload. The reconstructed URL http://saeshoes.com/ds/4.gif is likely the source of this payload. The presence of these functions and the embedded 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 http://saeshoes.com/ds/4.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_sheet_00.bin` `cf3f339bbd5d1e97a5315c960037677181f9a6d73d01ff7f62691aaf05cfc366`	xlm-macrosheet	OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin	197532 bytes

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