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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a092b1f3ccfb206e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

656.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-12
MD5: 5825e42caf7ebf7424fd78812eed5d27 SHA-1: 1b9432e681566ebc4ff595079247b946046d9a09 SHA-256: a092b1f3ccfb206eaa369106297d242f6c134898a029e759976307ffb87e2ea9
134 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file that leverages the OLE2Link vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) to fetch and execute a remote payload from the URL https://mub.me/7QPq. The presence of embedded PDF objects and VBA macros further suggests a multi-stage attack designed to deliver a malicious payload. The VBA code itself does not contain executable statements, but the primary exploit mechanism is clear.

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 https://mub.me/7QPq
    • 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
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
612b32d3332d233a0a7f5e357ced4f8c3019ecc9e37f24eac62da46f2fa14be3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 668672 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
03f5b7422eb7d77131484f9b01d2b87ee638b1014f48cee394f2c008ca80bd82		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 646656 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
df62401b7c5d63bed1040fcf4cd95842f8771011c3498b414e4f0e97879000db		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 503808 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.