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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 87c0e7d14de7354e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

26.3 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: 396416804173f10d917466e83e60bead SHA-1: 211e50e1cb93c56edc2ad2ef648dfe57098d0cc4 SHA-256: 87c0e7d14de7354eeb162f99dcf39987f10ab8196c67d0cecb3f22e9f6466df1
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. The macros contain strings such as URLDownloadToFileA, DownloadToFileA, and ShellExecuteA, indicating an intent to download and execute a payload. The reconstructed URL http://puroraw.com/ds/3.gif is likely the source of this payload. The use of these WinAPI functions suggests the macro attempts to download a file and then execute it.

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://puroraw.com/ds/3.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
bcb2a00478b552ea7aa0ba3395a02a282bd76772458f85092b2d3253d326ab01
xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 200414 bytes