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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 065ec44f35f6c7e6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.66 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-02
MD5: 0b104723cd036fbbf65a9b14f9b26095 SHA-1: 83032064013adc37dfe2bebc971e60088d59ab11 SHA-256: 065ec44f35f6c7e66c0180c5e4030f3688411c892e41174314aea8c185fe1775
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself. The PDF payload exhibits suspicious static findings and combines external actions with evasion techniques.

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
12e429f75551056f849bcbdf5f36016fa64e7850a8b66407c92774b5ab7c7369		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00139223/OLE10naTivE 1787 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
091cabe22c94e8d3945e41224b479f20bd47bad08fb0d1162dc8799c6533897f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1731584 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
d9afc41d6c96cc6f7929250caae2eab27038f2da7a03ef2f92d8ca77efdc870b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1710080 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
2f96502125dce22a0328cd48c44afedc065fa7103814531628f38a4e62e28ee9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1567232 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
ead474f25d3a2a4ada36336354a7fb3a21bb94c20b50b7d5f3a2ff694a6836e4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1479168 bytes

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