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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f72188274a5efdbc…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

870.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 64e6c519bb5caecd7fdf0558034ef516 SHA-1: 52c41858d5fb698b9e8f95ba497f84386e53bb7b SHA-256: f72188274a5efdbc3f5da2ac43696d991b0fa6b3757a80c71bd3b299ef098400
112 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The critical heuristic firing indicates exploitation of CVE-2017-0199 via an OLE2Link object, which is designed to download and execute a remote payload. The embedded URL 'https://rdt.li/8bWvGV' is the primary indicator for the second-stage download. The presence of a secondary embedded PDF with suspicious static findings, specifically an image-only lure, further supports a malicious intent, likely to trick the user into opening it.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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.

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_off00000e00.pdf
23f43a0b32f6dea8ce43edbdb468e6ce25d0b8ed30552f992023673cd28b3711
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 887296 bytes