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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 85959522a96fe27d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

758.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-25
MD5: eb299e7a54cebd104fd5de4a6d7fcba0 SHA-1: 2c7e4acfc5480ca78772e34be5c1c18b32c3ec9d SHA-256: 85959522a96fe27d9ea05011819bf6daee32e80ebad09a759627d732ff3d1fe7
134 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic T1071.001 Web Protocols

The sample leverages the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability, which is known to be used for remote code execution. The embedded URL points to a .DOC file, suggesting a document-based attack. The presence of multiple embedded PDFs with suspicious static findings further indicates a multi-stage attack designed to deliver a malicious payload.

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.
  • 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://192.3.243.150/bbc/BBCGBBCGBBCGBBCGBBCGCBBCGBBCGBBCGBBCGBBCG%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23BBCGBBBCGBBCGBBBCGBBBCG.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_off00002600.pdf
e94868e7765c8f13aeaff08e63a588b8a243409b061bc8ca4bc9dace5727d34e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2600 766976 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00007a00.pdf
3c53aed41d946fa205b03673e228aa72f606cd4941b322853c606dae486cf244		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x7A00 745472 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00017c00.pdf
74f1809f5f6c79a18dc371916c2d7cddda3abf9623e25697d01362628129e1b6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x17C00 679424 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00026800.pdf
edaf8517e1b89c2df897f379e93111dbf196447ebb80848a5adf56aef046bda2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x26800 619008 bytes

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