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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7a63e7972379c8b4…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

24.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: ccb57ee44f9feaade3811f8861239ff4 SHA-1: c739edc4907f26a7f612f7eae94bc85263d4e6f4 SHA-256: 7a63e7972379c8b446f1c4c6367eb6b2ea3985c8dc6b2309fe5a321a51b99746
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample contains critical heuristic firings indicating the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with WinAPI and download strings. These strings, including URLDownloadToFileA, DownloadToFileA, and ShellExecuteA, strongly suggest the macro's intent is to download and execute a second-stage payload from a remote source. The absence of a document body means the rationale is based solely on the macro capabilities and extracted API calls.

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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
99a6a52acb8f5c734f6d86faf89e0637a94ac99f953aa583d2658b47d2e1f9b9		 xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 194023 bytes

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