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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 48acea163004c382…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

422.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-04-14
MD5: d5678f7b09a06b7428b96e3b03494a0d SHA-1: 07cef8facb11ec501f644871fa9b536f631ff8ec SHA-256: 48acea163004c382ca607b0df1ed23a8f4ff4b0ad4d884d2c98b4f58193f1ebd
110 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The critical heuristic firing indicates exploitation of CVE-2017-0199 via an OLE2Link object, which attempts to download a remote payload from the provided URL. The embedded URL is reconstructed as http://%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23ZZZZ99999999ZZ‪‬ZZZ‪‬Z999999‪‬99ZZZZZZZ55555Z5Z5Z55Z5Z5Z5ZZZZZZZ0LLLLLLLOOOOO0000000000LLLLL00000000000OOOLLLLLLL@172.245.123.109/x..........x..doc. Although no VBA code was found to be executable, the presence of an embedded PDF with suspicious findings suggests a multi-stage attack. The overall goal appears to be the delivery of a secondary malicious document or executable.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23ZZZZ99999999ZZ‪‬ZZZ‪‬Z999999‪‬99ZZZZZZZ55555Z5Z5Z55Z5Z5Z5ZZZZZZZ0LLLLLLLOOOOO0000000000LLLLL00000000000OOOLLLLLLL@172.245.123.109/x..........x..doc

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
stream_001_off00000960.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x960 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00011800.pdf
2386e8dc21a70ab53bad56a41f5578e318158a4df6cf83d4b1c69aac837337a4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x11800 360960 bytes

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