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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2566790bc2055918…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

678.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-09
MD5: b9f89277f5ab392074c8b406cc63ff31 SHA-1: 2ac25e41279e6397d86203dba80f9abfdbefa9e0 SHA-256: 2566790bc205591858b7158178dc89f117629b9f3fe382dd1d678a0f2e598c1c
112 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The critical heuristic firing for CVE-2017-0199 indicates that the OLE object is configured to download a remote file from the specified URL. The embedded PDF, while not containing text, is also flagged as suspicious. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is driven by the CVE exploit.

Heuristics 5

  • 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 high 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.
  • PDF paints image(s) but contains no text operators info PDF_IMAGE_ONLY_LURE
    PDF has 1 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://23.94.239.89/SSP/000000000000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230000000000000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%2300000000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230.DOC

Extracted artifacts 2

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_off00002400.pdf
d596a802e8abce5f96d7d4adf4c318f311228435d2bdfa7eb2f82f9a92be56a3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2400 685568 bytes

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