analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware

analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 91 tokens per session (778 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A static-analysis guide for investigating Excel 4.0 macros, an older spreadsheet automation system also called XLM. It examines extracted formulas for automatic startup actions, hidden strings, downloads, and command execution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find automatic entry points, identify commands and downloads, unwind text obfuscation, and review extracted macro formulas from XLS or XLSM files.
Why use it?
It helps inspect malicious spreadsheets without opening them in Excel, where automatic macro cells could run. It reveals behavior that may be hidden outside ordinary VBA macros.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to find automatic entry points, identify commands and downloads, unwind text obfuscation, and review extracted macro formulas from XLS or XLSM files.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack --skill analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware

README.md
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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 778 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00091 $0.00778
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00389
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00156
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00078

Measured 9d ago against content hash adb1d9804a4f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/analyst.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware/SKILL.md · 90 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 90 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Analyzing Excel 4.0 Macro Malware

When to Use

  • You have an extracted Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet (e.g., from a .xls/.xlsm dumped with oletools/XLMMacroDeobfuscator) and need to find auto-run cells and execution primitives.
  • You are triaging maldocs that hide logic in legacy macro sheets rather than VBA.

Do not use Excel to open the document to "see" the macro — opening triggers the auto-run cells. Work from the extracted formula text statically.

Prerequisites

  • The extracted XLM formula text (cell address → formula). Optional: oletools to extract it.

Safety & Handling

  • Never open the workbook in Excel; analyze the extracted formulas inertly. Defang URLs.

Workflow

Step 1: Find auto-executing entry points

python scripts/analyst.py analyze macros.txt

Flags defined-name triggers (Auto_Open, Auto_Close) and the cells they point to, plus =HALT()/=RETURN() flow markers.

Step 2: Identify execution and download primitives

Detects EXEC(, CALL(, REGISTER( (Win32 imports), and URLDownload-style CALL patterns that fetch and run a payload.

Step 3: Unwind obfuscation

Surfaces CHAR()/& string-building, FORMULA.FILL/FORMULA self-writing, and base/MID slicing used to hide strings; reconstructs concatenated literals where possible.

Step 4: Extract IOCs

Pull URLs/paths and defang them; record the execution method (regsvr32, rundll32, mshta).

Validation

  • Auto-run entry cells are identified, not just the presence of macros.
  • Execution primitives (EXEC/CALL/REGISTER) are reported with their arguments.
  • Reconstructed strings and URLs are defanged.

Pitfalls

  • Heavily obfuscated sheets that self-write cells at runtime — static reconstruction is partial.
  • Macro sheets hidden as Very Hidden that simple viewers miss.
  • Confusing benign legacy spreadsheets that legitimately use XLM.

References

Read the full file on GitHub · 90 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 90 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A adb1d9804a4f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

analyzing-excel-4-macro-malware is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 778 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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