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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b2a1af0a6d97409c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

985.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-05
MD5: 42f190ce42f7247367e50d530222b647 SHA-1: d0fd681cb1e738896cd98ccb123cdf46ee54746a SHA-256: b2a1af0a6d97409cfd8e7a7a1ddf4e6e479f38f75a0f74986350bdf7995e4cef
232 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an OLE file weaponized to exploit CVE-2017-0199, indicated by the 'CVE_2017_0199_WEAPONIZED_URL' heuristic firing. It contains an embedded PDF which itself links to a payload at 'https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com'. The OLE document also contains a URL 'http://192.3.108.47/0988/sun/update.hta' which is likely the initial download source for the exploit. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the presence of the exploit and the embedded PDF strongly suggests a downloader or dropper functionality.

Heuristics 7

  • OLE2Link / URL Moniker weaponized URL — CVE-2017-0199 critical CVE exact CVE_2017_0199_WEAPONIZED_URL
    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.
  • PDF link points directly to executable/archive payload critical PDF_DIRECT_PAYLOAD_LINK
    PDF contains a clickable HTTP(S) URI whose path ends in an executable, script, shortcut, disk image, or archive extension. Documents can legitimately link to installers, so this is a high-risk delivery indicator rather than a standalone exploit fingerprint.
  • Clickable PDF combines external action with parser-evasion structure high PDF_ACTION_PARSER_EVASION
    PDF has an external clickable URI together with object graph or xref structures that make parsers disagree, such as divergent duplicate objects, parser divergence, or xref offset mismatch. That combination is stronger than a plain link: the document is both an outward-action carrier and a parser-confusion/evasion sample.
  • 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.
  • 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://192.3.108.47/0988/sun/update.hta
    • https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com
    • 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 6

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_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
a07e21632568eb538cff01ea627d295c32857431a59aead2571e8751295ff2aa		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1005056 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
88ab28a6a57a55a77421200c52317705401b8efbed1526cf56e1941d6ac08e8d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 983552 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
e8ac67fd040f83ce1a38a291c48ac160d15b2e138eda0f539dfa4ba2e60db02e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 840704 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003bc00.pdf
03d3ec9cac608c1f33727a4f857f0a505eb49af14eeaf70b5d6ea4f5642bc98e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3BC00 764416 bytes

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