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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 026b972cd5a37528…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.66 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-01
MD5: fa4202239f24244cc87b96f832cfcaf0 SHA-1: 06c574b6fdd23b0c966c5f1ffc05838cac3cfbd6 SHA-256: 026b972cd5a3752844db26d1011e93933b00f15029f7aad5adae7a70637ef653
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is designed to deliver a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to a suspicious URL. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, indicating a deliberate attempt to conceal its malicious nature.

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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

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
70e430782be68eb3f6afda9011b0b6ccc910ae6aceba44f014b78cc610f5610a		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00054935/oLe10NATivE 1442 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
fb1ed0fe732cf4f99a9263dcad1c1ed4f01dfc40930aab5ba3714df22ceae0b3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1731072 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
a639281c896d468f0be5a900bf4a32d4b1151b50cd0e02e960aa2b9240b79509		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1709568 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
f7b4dd897e90e3dda08a096fe216a0ef094a0bc850dfbf4199e19d350f2a8755		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1566720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
c53932e73b8f360aa5088cde37ec6e9f8631ec0c08b69385f3a28ac5c47b7f85		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1478656 bytes

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