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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 08d5854552ab50e4…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.35 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-22
MD5: 8dd3e3dab122c407fe22ed7a47e9d053 SHA-1: 317bcf03237a3a10151a6c6544c0014789eb937a SHA-256: 08d5854552ab50e43d7075de03e0474647389e63e985f0c5b9cc1e756d78048a
332 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

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 presence of NOP sleds suggests shellcode execution. The VBA macros are benign and do not contribute to the malicious behavior.

Heuristics 10

  • 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.
  • NOP sled detected high SC_NOP_SLED
    Found 20+ consecutive 0x90 bytes
  • 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.
  • NOP-equivalent sled detected medium SC_NOP_EQUIV_SLED
    Long run of 0x61 bytes
  • 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
52c9f46ddb4e58b6ad48ccd92bc1036d0d6de6e8b63d437835fb07e3e1a006e4		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD003748CA/olE10nAtIVe 1517 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f200.pdf
4489c61832a3ff4440bf3742b6a89713467900c3e4b67b314330c5d2e8822fe2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F200 1028608 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
c8458fd909e95a7bcf8a122a7144e0a2fa0e834c8f9ea55022cafcf759179574		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1414144 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
8bdbda790676295c3756f5c936baef2e4bc5b8f7f23a01c5eb914279a56cf5fb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 1392640 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00019000.pdf
89da480f22697949d72767dc52ade869aa53d3c058bc865826da91c15f0f7678		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x19000 1315840 bytes

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