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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 89282500a6710fe3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

277.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-14
MD5: b2764b8aa28aaad3bb23577a5f788c77 SHA-1: 6d58bf0dd58e79c372ebc0b77f7fee3a5e1bf935 SHA-256: 89282500a6710fe36e6d3cfbbc4be68657cf92fc31018b6019b14cd7f1a51256
134 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 secondary payload. The embedded VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain executable code, suggesting the exploit is triggered by the OLE structure itself. The presence of multiple embedded PDF objects with suspicious static findings further indicates a complex, multi-stage attack. The primary IOC is the URL used for the initial download.

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 1 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://192.3.243.148/500/mt/IBSIBWIBSIBWIBSIBSWIBSIBW%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23IBSIBWIBWIBSIBSWIBSWIBS.DOC

Extracted artifacts 7

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
57a86400280c9d0ea6c27b14b7ac99664f043ae5654a5da251446a1cb81907ba		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 280576 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006000.pdf
d6802980768a573f476ed0743b1a967ac79353c611b371c88722adc44c381a76		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6000 259584 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e200.pdf
1dd0219fbfc49fdb723a696330428ae0a29208469d66b26900d3d7ad0431c456		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE200 226304 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00015e00.pdf
8245e9d5cd48fd9aa641760c4f8e65cab0f28c6c444b99ffcc6f607f6fb292c9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x15E00 194560 bytes

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