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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ce15950b3cc99cfd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

277.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-14
MD5: 35ff25fbcd00e6da67536501fc1cceb8 SHA-1: d551b6394625c0f7c1cdeb19f722e050445885b1 SHA-256: ce15950b3cc99cfde1da2100b250f23d0b3c36ea17106a40c3ee975493f6eab9
134 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 DOC file. The embedded VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the exploit is triggered by the OLE structure itself. The secondary embedded PDF also contains suspicious findings, indicating a multi-stage attack. The primary IOC is the URL used for the initial payload download.

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 1 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 http://192.3.243.157/fbi/0/ijijhgijsifjsidjiwjeijijijijifjisjipjijsidfjijijsfisdjif%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23jijdifjweijiwer.DOC

Extracted artifacts 7

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_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
8181950aff59421648fcb0cb1a4502d9070590d0335788509fd830728eba1748		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 280064 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006000.pdf
c3a21b2d97c163b6d86003ae5950f7e1109c00dcecc59938aaeda858abd17cdf		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6000 259072 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e200.pdf
138581c040a32d89a0e6bb59f7a5154050cef1dd73f73afea12e580e7ddb9a93		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE200 225792 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00015e00.pdf
ad42dd0e4c44621aebcd18d29b335b4cc0a562c139bdb86411e37f2a6a136214		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x15E00 194048 bytes

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