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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 98b2ca9b8bd94170…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

541.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-04-19
MD5: 6c792ef2cf976a625fb3a283ee2ebc9d SHA-1: f9a30fadf6c8f1462a178e39321e009afcc79232 SHA-256: 98b2ca9b8bd9417025c59b9eb9e043be4fdb5de3e7449dc4cf7285e0f4748e61
110 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The critical heuristic firing for CVE_2017_0199 indicates the OLE object attempts to load a remote resource from the URL http://154.91.202.45/q/%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23.doc. Although the VBA macro source is present, it contains no executable statements, suggesting the exploit relies on the OLE vulnerability itself rather than macro execution. The embedded PDF also shows suspicious static findings.

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://154.91.202.45/q/%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23.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
c0b50dec77ed39d5ee16afe72905633f778a23bfb4b50b0f176ce0ef6eef172d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x11800 482304 bytes

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