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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0bc828b37702b134…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.22 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-17
MD5: c2c6e875a3d93c19dd7928dfccd6130e SHA-1: 75064e2365e7b2c40a02c2a21f36a6531aa8a397 SHA-256: 0bc828b37702b1342fd5ab2a1dce09b00ed271a0b42965454de4605aeb27d63d
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain executable code, suggesting the primary exploit vector is the OLE object.

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
0bedd32ea8c7bec8ef74cc8e5bea59e33d01f9a02d0a98c97ddecca9bc6aa980		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1812 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
f65e8c74f696be247f2d1309405f831cda5321370e55f08f93194471c585f666		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0000ADBB/OlE10NaTIvE 1375 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075400.pdf
dd08458f52b4a3107fbf706cc0c0b4ef1ddb2e71e73ae2a8ad9e025a442ca5cf		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75400 801792 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
121f09ed352a32dc1dd46379f9dfa99f4c53a5f43a383992ed442a2a1805cd6a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1277440 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
e3df9263684ceb9a08034e54016acfe7d914f807013fca5285f88f92ef3b88f9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1255936 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
d63516b2ca88f65d84a8c69887d48d3470ef1e3cb186c3f477b799b32d5e7a82		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1112576 bytes

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