How to Check PowerPoint PPTX Files for Malware and Other Threats in Node.js

Like most Office formats, PowerPoint PPTX files can be filled with malware, malicious links, and other threatening content.

We might encounter malicious PPTX files in phishing emails, and we might find them uploaded through client-side file upload portals on our website.

Thankfully, using a free API, we can check PPTX files for viruses, malware, and a variety of other threatening content types (including Macros and OLE features) in a single web request. We can take advantage of the code examples provided below to easily call this API within our Node.js forms.

To start, we’ll need to install the SDK. We can install using NPM install by running the below command:

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

Alternatively, we can add the following snippet to our package.json:

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

Next, we can call the function. If we want, we can set custom threat rules against Macros, Scripts, Invalid Files (which might trigger out-of-bounds memory writes in certain programs) and more:

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);

We’ll need a free Cloudmersive API key to authorize our requests. This will allow us to make up to 800 API calls per month with no additional commitments (our call total will reset the following month).

Now we can quickly and easily check PPTX files for a variety of common threats in a quick, easy web request.