How to Check POTX Files for Viruses, Malware, and Other Threats in Node.js

We probably don’t run into POTX (PowerPoint template) files nearly as often as fully-fledged PPTX presentation documents. They’re no less capable of carrying viruses and malware, however, so we should be equally diligent about scanning them for threats.

Using Node.js code examples provided below, we can take advantage of a free API to scan POTX files (and a wide range of other common file formats) for viruses, malware, and other content threats. We can identify if POTX files contain macros, OLE, malware signatures, virus signatures, scripts, and a wide range of other threats.

Structuring our API call is extremely simple. We can first install the SDK via NPM install:

npm install cloudmersive-virus-api-client --save

Or we can add this snippet to our package.json:

  "dependencies": {
    "cloudmersive-virus-api-client": "^1.1.9"
  }

Next, we can turn our attention briefly to authorization. We’ll need a free Cloudmersive API key to make up to 800 API calls per month (this total will simply reset the following month once we hit our limit).

With our API key ready, we can go ahead and call the function using Node.js code examples below. We can set custom threat rules in our request body to block certain types of threats (for instance, we can set ‘allowMacros’ to “false” to treat macro-enabled POTX files the same way we would treat virus- or malware-infected POTX files):

var CloudmersiveVirusApiClient = require('cloudmersive-virus-api-client');
var defaultClient = CloudmersiveVirusApiClient.ApiClient.instance;

// Configure API key authorization: Apikey
var Apikey = defaultClient.authentications['Apikey'];
Apikey.apiKey = 'YOUR API KEY';



var apiInstance = new CloudmersiveVirusApiClient.ScanApi();

var inputFile = Buffer.from(fs.readFileSync("C:\\temp\\inputfile").buffer); // File | Input file to perform the operation on.

var opts = { 
  'allowExecutables': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block executable files (program code) from being allowed in the input file.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowInvalidFiles': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block invalid files, such as a PDF file that is not really a valid PDF file, or a Word Document that is not a valid Word Document.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowScripts': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block script files, such as a PHP files, Python scripts, and other malicious content or security threats that can be embedded in the file.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowPasswordProtectedFiles': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block password protected and encrypted files, such as encrypted zip and rar files, and other files that seek to circumvent scanning through passwords.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowMacros': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block macros and other threats embedded in document files, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint embedded Macros, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowXmlExternalEntities': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block XML External Entities and other threats embedded in XML files, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowInsecureDeserialization': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block Insecure Deserialization and other threats embedded in JSON and other object serialization files, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowHtml': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block HTML input in the top level file; HTML can contain XSS, scripts, local file accesses and other threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended) [for API keys created prior to the release of this feature default is true for backward compatability].
  'restrictFileTypes': "restrictFileTypes_example" // String | Specify a restricted set of file formats to allow as clean as a comma-separated list of file formats, such as .pdf,.docx,.png would allow only PDF, PNG and Word document files.  All files must pass content verification against this list of file formats, if they do not, then the result will be returned as CleanResult=false.  Set restrictFileTypes parameter to null or empty string to disable; default is disabled.
};

var callback = function(error, data, response) {
  if (error) {
    console.error(error);
  } else {
    console.log('API called successfully. Returned data: ' + data);
  }
};
apiInstance.scanFileAdvanced(inputFile, opts, callback);

That’s all the code we’ll need! Now we can protect our Node.js forms from a variety of unique threats at once.