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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 08716e06c59ea176…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.15 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-10
MD5: f723dd301da1ea9171b2304969ff1a17 SHA-1: 5cc5cca21c1b9a95e312e2b1d7859ecb3cd3b80e SHA-256: 08716e06c59ea176e0ab359adafa5fd2af0d6f6ffa4e2c0a2595fb79e380eef4
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: Malicious File T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel file containing an OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object embeds a PDF file which, in turn, contains a direct link to a payload. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques and points to a suspicious URL.

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
86d08a90e2050f638122b34b295f328e9dc7d1aa5f310c0b9fcb668e7ac2b4bb		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00027097/OLE10NATiVE 1419 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002b800.pdf
404b71b68d5806829d5d4997d2088e50549a3e3a3a9be33255227819590c8798		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2B800 1030656 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
9cbdc7d7669980edd72c3cb3ab8250f56714c1affa057450a9e9bfe03ccdc2c4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1204224 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
bb3359c663f255eb3149b2962928b69ad69768a110d855cfac85e364a0ee9680		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1182720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004a200.pdf
9c0cc9e242b253a04f6efd5a2bb55fc8825bb475690203eb90b0ff2f7f572d71		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4A200 905216 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.