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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4ca2feabb6c34629…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

872.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-20
MD5: a77add9512f7123b8f04e54afad25e47 SHA-1: e92bace4afd9baff6878770388f559f07cda31cf SHA-256: 4ca2feabb6c34629299ddd1faf7ab08338fce8bc5cf5f7ac001662fa4aba1955
114 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an OLE file that exploits CVE-2017-0199 via a URL moniker to download a remote document. The embedded VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting they are not the primary execution vector. The primary threat appears to be the remote loader functionality triggered by the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability, which points to a downloader or initial access stage.

Heuristics 6

  • 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 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.
  • 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://192.210.175.4/780/doc/00o0o0oo0o0oO0O0Oo0O00O0o0o00o000o0o0O0000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230000000000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%2300000000000.dOC
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 5

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_off0004b400.pdf
686587c0f001152bcb851ff7c8cdf7c727e2ee1a4646f4c51ac6a1e947ad19dd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4B400 585216 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
0c3c4c00bbb38f7c2a37b5d30ec6d5434418f52685200e651e034ecf0957de03		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 889344 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
3f6eba42e1922e2a7a140f693168e440a509b68fa4ea369e853f7b937f84e3a2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 868352 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00074600.pdf
4d6f91bd1aecb61811d316b6a3213eebc036087c747a8e84f90de7e6053b224b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x74600 416768 bytes

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