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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 07dfe88fa40f2fa1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.35 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-23
MD5: 1a80b51cebdf1a3d86e16885aa3448d5 SHA-1: 405d252952901e4d223f5ab43735af16041c0d1f SHA-256: 07dfe88fa40f2fa1166cc78558dcb3ebb4d788b312c44632d2783434b2222651
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 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 executable or archive payload. The VBA macros are benign and do not contribute to the malicious functionality. The primary attack vector appears to be the exploitation of the Equation Editor vulnerability to deliver a multi-stage payload.

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 6

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
735bb4c18ba159f21a29234476036ddfd9331795a735d67366c217d7a6af9e97		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00416301/OLe10natIVE 1723 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f200.pdf
67e4144bbea9aa121e321e2254ffa4b05d9d80630909e3bd9eceb258f28756ba		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F200 1029120 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
7f5d38f89b08a0fe942760beed0251ea02e2e7b9cee7906eb42172b4d7ba5896		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1414656 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
aeeb588aefc420ce2b90443d2607ef73f84c0e65119bc99f7b42561681d84e85		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 1393152 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00019000.pdf
30908fc91d0ece60adb8af5096cc44725d3e1d5759ebdf8c3478ea9768482e49		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x19000 1316352 bytes

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