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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 dbe0a980dced69ca…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

26.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: 2a613981a35ad4afc45f8b325712e8a1 SHA-1: 1ea05f602d5e27eed4d3ba75f095c5ceac5005e3 SHA-256: dbe0a980dced69cad082523230d67c5226b23299f792b5476521b5c3c7442ac7
182 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, which are known to be used for malicious purposes. The macros utilize WinAPI functions like URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA to download and execute a payload from the URL http://saeshoes.com/ds/4.gif. This indicates a downloader or droppper attack pattern.

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://saeshoes.com/ds/4.gif

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
cf3f339bbd5d1e97a5315c960037677181f9a6d73d01ff7f62691aaf05cfc366		 xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 197532 bytes

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