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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bd980fb1f921bf16…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

445.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2024-08-13
MD5: d35618eec168e30e2a2df672f612388c SHA-1: 7637c3d56066f932e38de4918c5a3756791491e2 SHA-256: bd980fb1f921bf16d88b62d519ed6adb057ffc3c93532fca6465fac9e7074123
112 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains a critical heuristic firing for CVE-2017-0199, indicating it attempts to exploit this vulnerability to download a remote payload. The embedded URL 'https://exi.link/JkAPbL' is the likely source of this payload. Additionally, a secondary PDF artifact was found with suspicious static findings, further suggesting a multi-stage attack. 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.
  • External URI info PDF_URI
    PDF contains an external URL action
  • 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://exi.link/JkAPbL
    • https://www.business.hsbc.com.hk/en-gb/resource-centre/commercial-tariffs
    • https://www.online-banking.business.hsbc.com.hk/portalserver/hsbc/dbbpage/commercial/online/timetable/cutoff

Extracted artifacts 4

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off00007926.bin
9a85db95c587691a5874b31b664b687edfec6192fc00b1fd6cbfbbe56ee0e2a8		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7926 13936 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009fa1.bin
3c119924dbdaf638dde5d0098e911912b53026a6636c8a487543986d08e96bb1		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9FA1 13556 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
ca654403ba4e7c96b8818e177e024a6d1cf558eb44d8a98cac4646a221184cea		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 452096 bytes

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