April 1st 2020: FlashPix File With VBA Code

Last year, there was some misunderstanding regarding Office Documents with VBA code mistakenly identified as FlashPix picture files.

The FlashPix picture format is an old format, based on the Compound File Binary Format (what I like to call OLE files). It has no support for VBA code at all (it doesn’t support any embedded scripting).

However, since it is an ole file, it’s technically possible to add storages and streams containing VBA code. This code can never execute, because the FlashPix specifications does not support it, and hence there are no image viewers that would recognize and execute this code.

So I took a FlashPix image (3d996a887c4a1b5b5ce70528f6bb4508). Here you can see the streams it contains:

And then I took a malicious AutoCAD drawing, and copied the VBA streams and storages into the FlashPix file:

Giving me this file 5040ef90824371a0bd0acaa36263553b.When I submitted this file to VirusTotal a couple of months ago, the AV detection ratio was 29/59. Which is far better than the other “AV-alert pictures” that I created.

If you are in need of a benign file that will trigger anti-virus, I shared this FlashPix PoC on the new malware sharing service Malware Bazaar.

Article Link: https://blog.didierstevens.com/2020/04/01/april-1st-2020-flashpix-file-with-vba-code/