Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis — malicious · e421cffdd71aae53

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

24.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300

MD5: 75b3dc4c9b5eac2f165b1bf4eadf6f34 SHA-1: 113eab56d143252474a8b74883f7c764d602cb18 SHA-256: e421cffdd71aae530574db97fd47786291b85d187ba99f1147cdf4d5ae4fca40

120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing Excel 4.0 macros. Heuristics indicate the presence of WinAPI calls such as URLDownloadToFileA and ShellExecuteA, suggesting the macro attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload. The specific URLs and executable paths are not fully extractable due to truncation, but the intent is clear.

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.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_sheet_00.bin` `99a6a52acb8f5c734f6d86faf89e0637a94ac99f953aa583d2658b47d2e1f9b9`	xlm-macrosheet	OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin	194023 bytes

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