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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0e237994d3817753…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.16 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-18
MD5: 01904c3ee18f532f8c638794f2a23304 SHA-1: 623fa31235d782a81a566098117a840178187948 SHA-256: 0e237994d381775338fd4641833583d589a8b85f8e38e7deeb0889ab638255e1
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Clickjacking T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: 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 has suspicious static findings and a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within 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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 8

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
5b0929a35ed9272ce78ec582264c55e541d9523109f9dac2dfacdc84a677bc00
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0013327B/ole10nAtIVE 1669 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
6b066ada03efc2acf9b32919678c55206f918a71785940b5a6e7bfd499e9009f
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1207296 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
8f82f62941013e5b3703fc2b33bed1bf047fc4bf5540eda7094832086a1deced
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1186304 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
1e91aa43273a35d07b6215542e954503996669de670513012eb87309386eea3e
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1152512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
b79e6a142166a82319b89b2e6c4ef7d1706b90a60b5469563956292a3e95004d
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1064448 bytes