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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b123354a4fe929ac…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

511.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-05
MD5: 6c05ed84f671087f720b9da2a2694d15 SHA-1: 4afea93dfd0ef9192dcf9eaebfe8650e80acb34f SHA-256: b123354a4fe929ac887e95c171b019ac1976cc71e70e26e43979b6cf0a31197d
114 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 remote document. The embedded URL points to a suspicious `.dOC` file hosted on an IP address, indicating a likely initial access vector for a secondary payload. Although no VBA code was found to be executable, the exploit itself is sufficient to trigger the download. The embedded PDF, while containing images, lacks text operators, suggesting it might be a lure or part of the exploit chain.

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 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.
  • 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://23.95.106.3/200/po/ioooi0ooioi0oo0oioioioi00i0oiooio00oioioioi0oi0io0o00%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%230000%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%2300000000.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
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
ae5468c21196bea9faa1a51e269eecc84147573ed742cf317a5c706eb84c58f3
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 519680 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006000.pdf
ff6fb27abd671ece6ce7af4839e95ae2d6ccdb58aa45e9ae03a266137d31501d
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6000 498688 bytes