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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f70af7fc5e6dee70…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

512.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-24
MD5: bdfee9f5a11fd27cbca37840dc71a4e1 SHA-1: 7e8b6deb9ec53ed9c094e6bcdd92022252534b6b SHA-256: f70af7fc5e6dee70757cc92a9cc2f3ac09d61bf7644017e67ba29ffdfed4d2d9
134 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The critical heuristic firing for CVE-2017-0199 indicates the sample is designed to exploit this vulnerability via a URL moniker. The embedded URL points to a remote DOC file, suggesting a downloader or initial access mechanism. The presence of multiple embedded PDF files with suspicious static findings further suggests a multi-stage attack, potentially using the PDFs as lures or payloads.

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.
  • 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://192.3.216.144/IRC/IRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRC%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23IRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCI.DOC
    • 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 5

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_off00001000.pdf
45fff341b5e54a4c8aad72ce2f444e9f32490c41eb82d7c54df55c882c26d7c1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 520704 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00010e00.pdf
1a67e2923f10889f087f5e5261538a79e75c95f54faabdaf9d4660428aa91787		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x10E00 455680 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0001fc00.pdf
1a8dbb864108303ae119509b3ee321439e6504923303f97feaeed1fc06142109		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1FC00 394752 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002fa00.pdf
cd395a668ce6224d7c4ca7629bcabce71ab529f51013f406a4c0dc77fb18f8f1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2FA00 329728 bytes

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