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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 63a446fb0c37ab5a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

853.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-17
MD5: b8c06960396f7c4dd86a42c88a05260d SHA-1: c660fc5fa7dd2d4c55773d4d8c26a2b8adcccd7e SHA-256: 63a446fb0c37ab5ac76e4c0961833edac3ba2824e089943f7b3966ed76948822
134 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1059.005 PowerShell T1071.001 Web Protocols T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The sample leverages the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability, which is indicated by the OLE2Link/URL Moniker heuristic firing. This vulnerability allows the exploitation of URL Monikers to download and execute remote content. The embedded URL http://198.23.187.131/ghs/1/00O0O0O0Oo0o0o0O0O0O0O0O0o0o0000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230000000000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%2300000000000.DOC is the primary indicator of the secondary payload's location. The presence of an embedded PDF with suspicious static findings further suggests a multi-stage attack.

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 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.
  • 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://198.23.187.131/ghs/1/00O0O0O0Oo0o0o0O0O0O0O0O0o0o0000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230000000000%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 4

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_off0003fa00.pdf
b5e2fa929c185344911087aa77ac9b50ba365a8aea525a2365feb27113c455d9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3FA00 612864 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
30ae78d84590a704310d9c453f8995a37def09617d50f52021131b408d3b2752		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 869376 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00085800.pdf
22f90772b5175bb07fa983205e0b94e50aef265ec878cd409515a63a280d1149		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x85800 326656 bytes

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