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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 45f05fe75b446a82…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

290.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-05-11
MD5: 480498df93151b7a2d64e5a810d3fd4d SHA-1: d531e4565ce75c897fb51489ae4774b37290bb83 SHA-256: 45f05fe75b446a82ce998424b9c3bc8d32659c9fc2e922241a75b93d0d7ccb9a
112 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file that exploits CVE-2017-0199 via a URL moniker to load a remote resource. The embedded URL, http://192.3.140.107/e/QQQ#################################QQ.doc, is indicative of a downloader. The presence of a polyglot child PDF with suspicious static findings further suggests a multi-stage attack. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the core exploit mechanism is clear.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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://192.3.140.107/e/QQQ%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23QQ.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_off00011400.pdf
1f2a125bd64c992b69d02c05c9d6626f16beb9b332880e840bec9466f07eccec
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x11400 226304 bytes