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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 eb8d2c65f245daa7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

24.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 14.0300
MD5: 6e4829825c66ceb83dc84d608862aede SHA-1: d764d63dbc2d1caaf67757cbfb77dbc6f6d08ab6 SHA-256: eb8d2c65f245daa7964409ddeaa7c3c75cf0fc86f900005b91a35d6beb36733e
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 secondary payload. The specific URLs and executable paths are not fully discernible due to truncation, but the intent to download and run a file 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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_sheet_00.bin
99a6a52acb8f5c734f6d86faf89e0637a94ac99f953aa583d2658b47d2e1f9b9		 xlm-macrosheet OOXML XLM macro sheet: xl/macrosheets/sheet1.bin 194023 bytes

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