Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis — malicious · 6738b615a4dfeaf1

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

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

MD5: bd4b43e42d132e199e7e596845cc46d2 SHA-1: b01a269529a3b4fed7600a17dc53f304c2993b8d SHA-256: 6738b615a4dfeaf10f0ba62dba9cee5686b48ed966984ad66d340b5c0ba0bde2

120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. Heuristics indicate the presence of WinAPI strings related to downloading and executing files, such as URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA. This suggests the macro is designed to download and run a secondary payload, likely an executable.

Heuristics 2

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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_sheet_00.bin` `99a6a52acb8f5c734f6d86faf89e0637a94ac99f953aa583d2658b47d2e1f9b9`	xlm-macrosheet	OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin	194023 bytes

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