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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a74daa4dab69bffd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

24.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: bdb28082eef0cae3728aac63f75277ae SHA-1: 4fd80711c84c5b6b4a0a1b93e29afe36ff760f88 SHA-256: a74daa4dab69bffd89feb3fa0fd7f884775056819470f87ddb3bb2049a7fddc5
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro sheet, which is a critical finding. Heuristics indicate the presence of WinAPI calls and download strings, specifically mentioning URLDownloadToFileA, DownloadToFileA, ShellExecuteA, CreateDirectoryA, URLMon, and Kernel32, along with an .exe path. This strongly suggests the macro's purpose is to download and execute a secondary payload. The specific functions and strings point to a downloader or droppper functionality.

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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