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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8ab9eaed17c65a1d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

67.6 KB Created: 2021-10-27 10:31:49 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000
MD5: b6c6ae3f3290bd88972ad381d9dfcf05 SHA-1: 794c2f36b762b4442e013c9d8f71675fecf2cf28 SHA-256: 8ab9eaed17c65a1d630e15714e1a505392cf8d2380319f866de52e51989ed74a
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. The macros utilize the WinAPI function URLDownloadToFileA to download a file from one of the provided URLs. Although the URLs themselves are marked as confirmed benign, the presence of the macro and the download function indicates a malicious intent to fetch and execute a payload. The specific payload or its ultimate destination could not be determined due to the truncated script content.

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 (3 URLs) 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 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/910251809556271117/912318020003692574/FqtFBvEOrukvcuntfuck.mp4
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/910251809556271117/912318007320145940/XOftdbhXmOZcuntfuck.mp4
    • https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/910251809556271117/912318014416912415/XOwuRIcuntfuck.mp4

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
95b60d3936b0717078736fde73d357d0a48c194996aea6455d9a62873b68e0c3
xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 4279 bytes