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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 00a3e059f36dfb52…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-05
MD5: 34be916b9631511bd711f4208e0e384b SHA-1: d917263cd0d8d011919fe619ea8f28b3d880fd00 SHA-256: 00a3e059f36dfb52443c5745cb2259126996b98d0b248d4a7220fdc5b1a2ed52
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 User Execution: Malicious File T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an external URL. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is solely reliant on the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

Heuristics 8

  • Equation Editor Ole10Native payload — CVE-2017-11882 critical CVE likely CVE_2017_11882_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE
    An embedded Microsoft Equation 3.0 object (CLSID 0002CE02-0000-0000-C000-000000000046) carries an Ole10Native packager stream instead of the normal Equation Native/MTEF data. This is the weaponized Equation Editor RCE delivery shape used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 maldocs. The payload (font-record overflow + shellcode) is frequently encrypted and the stream name case-scrambled to evade scanners, but an Equation object holding an Ole10Native stream has no benign use.
  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    Contains Equation Editor object — related to CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 exploitation, but CLSID presence alone is not the malformed MTEF exploit primitive.
  • 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.
  • PDF link points directly to executable/archive payload critical PDF_DIRECT_PAYLOAD_LINK
    PDF contains a clickable HTTP(S) URI whose path ends in an executable, script, shortcut, disk image, or archive extension. Documents can legitimately link to installers, so this is a high-risk delivery indicator rather than a standalone exploit fingerprint.
  • Clickable PDF combines external action with parser-evasion structure high PDF_ACTION_PARSER_EVASION
    PDF has an external clickable URI together with object graph or xref structures that make parsers disagree, such as divergent duplicate objects, parser divergence, or xref offset mismatch. That combination is stronger than a plain link: the document is both an outward-action carrier and a parser-confusion/evasion sample.
  • 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 https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/

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
ole10native_00.bin
87f0101f21eb7492a9f8f5558bb684c89dd16e665cc888f07717ccff313877ba		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001C1549/ole10native 1350 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00072a00.pdf
f1e18e28f02c1f9391ed14099128c28aa3e3d36cb4b8a2a5dec2875b01d06703		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x72A00 906240 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
5ea162109276d12b81c4ce59611cac6bae86d5fb44e46d00c7f57faf63ffb2cd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1371136 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
7eb4f965c8b93755b035937e9ec9361deb3909450fc7b24dc50cc057e26cab57		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1349632 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
bc849264e7dd0e57d8bf6a2290abc884490c0674d588750550839f1aacff5995		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1206272 bytes

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