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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0409bda380f83c71…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

968.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 005b50a3443dff0e8c8809efa474769c SHA-1: 7ec3ea43deebde4361ea542017134d3b78c23d0b SHA-256: 0409bda380f83c7110d4eba0f6df787d56fd99d6cf196a26e0dbf610e4b226f0
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The critical heuristic firing for CVE-2017-0199 indicates the sample is designed to exploit this vulnerability to load a remote resource. The embedded URL points to a suspicious domain, likely hosting a secondary payload. The presence of an embedded PDF with suspicious static findings further supports the malicious intent, suggesting a multi-stage attack. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the polyglot nature and the CVE exploit are strong indicators of malicious activity.

Heuristics 7

  • OLE2Link / URL Moniker → remote loader — CVE-2017-0199 critical CVE likely CVE_2017_0199
    Document contains an embedded OLE link object whose URL Moniker points to a remote URL. When the host file is opened, Office follows the link, downloads the URL, and processes the response based on its Content-Type (HTA -> mshta.exe, RTF → Word, etc.) — the documented CVE-2017-0199 primitive. The URL extension is not a reliable filter; servers can return different payloads to Office's user agent.
  • Secondary embedded PDF body has suspicious static findings critical POLYGLOT_CHILD_PDF_STATIC_TRIAGE
    A valid PDF body was found at a nonzero offset inside another container and its carved contents matched PDF exploit or lure heuristics. This catches polyglots where the top-level magic routes to ZIP/OLE while a PDF reader or downstream parser opens the hidden PDF payload.
  • VBA project contains no executable statements low OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains a VBA project, but extracted modules only contain attributes/options/comments and no executable statements.
  • Encrypted PDF (string and stream contents are opaque to static scan) info PDF_ENCRYPTED
    PDF declares /Encrypt — string objects and stream contents are encrypted with the standard security handler (RC4 or AES). On its own this is informational; legitimate encrypted documents include signed contracts, billing statements, and rights-managed material. Static heuristics cannot inspect encrypted payload bytes.
  • Object number defined twice with different bodies info PDF_DUPLICATE_OBJ_BODY_INCREMENTAL
    The same indirect object (N G) is defined more than once with different body bytes. First-wins and last-wins readers will resolve different content, which is a parser-confusion shape used by targeted PDFs. Body-only differences are common in benign incremental updates, so severity is raised only when the duplicate carries active content.
  • PDF paints image(s) but contains no text operators info PDF_IMAGE_ONLY_LURE
    PDF has 2 image XObject(s) and the content stream contains no text-emitting operators (BT/ET, Tj, TJ, ', ") in either raw bytes or decompressed streams — this is the screenshot-as-PDF pattern used to bypass text-based scanners and to deliver instructions purely through rendered pixels. It is informational unless paired with invisible links or risky URI context.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 3

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
b020afa5d401588757a84a64ed2ad83411bb6e7d9b7bf0a9e9df10b61ed1dbcd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 987648 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006c00.pdf
10399bfc058d831482ca85615ca4ced9af1fb64a78fa5914932f09f94754586e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6C00 963584 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.