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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bb40265975cf0090…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

290.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-05-10
MD5: c866f2864776bbbaf9b16046936f8fca SHA-1: 5347066a2712fdcaa0fee7eb4516ecbbda7be65e SHA-256: bb40265975cf0090c23dfe6ff653d7849fc2ebd24ff35321860ca63ba283cb66
112 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, a known vulnerability for remote code execution. It contains an embedded URL that likely serves as a loader for a secondary payload. The presence of a polyglot child PDF with suspicious static findings further indicates malicious intent. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the core exploit mechanism is clear.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • 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://154.12.230.59/z/QQQQ%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%23%23%23%23QQQQ.doc

Extracted artifacts 2

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_off00011400.pdf
fa8b54ea2b6d6bc182f5e7b525248a2921cf78bc3cb07cca5a71c5d193568556		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x11400 226304 bytes

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