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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0e9dfe4666c16b2f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-29
MD5: 8d1af21aac33869bc9ee5bc8e4b563e3 SHA-1: 747f004c6a808a8486861c5e4acc7ee13a8deb94 SHA-256: 0e9dfe4666c16b2f1298f6c07653de476d8642af1eab5a15de25c249471bfd73
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1187 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file is an Excel document 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. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques. 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://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
038582144fd2bfdfc978cfe09924f9cbd765cee2bb075a906c0a60758aa2d144		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000F73AB/OLe10NatiVe 1867 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006c800.pdf
4c559f3e1e1f31d0f99b21eb35b11790da017c7f045751504c06a47bbc7c0abd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6C800 848384 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
b18d828d32c7e03060ef2f139d88bc01425b83997140660dee394de58f6ffbc2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1288704 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
dd5c506855bc1c4efbee186b2770a8dd12935f3d04fb2fcd56f7d099136061f9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1266688 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
bc3457a33e327af56fb84ae7d479fa5f6a36a06a11da581a58de0ee75072b5a5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1123328 bytes

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