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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0ee9c92bb2a33e17…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-03
MD5: f423b9a20050151bb9e67f2967948ddf SHA-1: 39b8feb8e346556c6a1926f213e7af55be8eb8e1 SHA-256: 0ee9c92bb2a33e17cd63f1038f1f012db057b881adb4fa69bf8a018736915a0e
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

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, in turn, has a direct link to an external resource. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting an attempt to conceal malicious activity. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely contained within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

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
067f7803169306d4b9d3c24d40a54829e5e82ac22c727c98d06d6738feb44637		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00305FBF/Ole10naTIVe 1394 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002c600.pdf
85392127ebce1fdb181d378174041ba1850939b0a39ff558709b5a228ed9633b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2C600 1193984 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
a26e924676605cb9075ed312e5c403fbc331bf78c809d0a538802a21d5c3be93		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1371136 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
4817b1074f25a6fc408c957f84d49bb81e89403e51b92ffd555df4c518f7247f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1349632 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004b000.pdf
03f8246079a4322b3a336cf7f93139a5193694b3c63072ca1a37ce642a07e2b4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4B000 1068544 bytes

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