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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0fbd7b486645d928…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.64 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-03
MD5: 9e3a97ab5f3a9179a0357dbcc99e2ef5 SHA-1: 486896377da7be161a280737d3a8fa2ac73b8bab SHA-256: 0fbd7b486645d92821b327c5e2d361333ee0fe7de6ed68eab29c3b031ea1e620
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1187 Exploitation for Client Execution

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 executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the primary attack vector is 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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 9

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
34896e2aad27f22f3780a5524bceec152317dc33cf7a46f0e97bfb23bf1d0dbb		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0014D34A/OlE10NAtIVE 1581 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off00092d7d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x92D7D 12100 bytes
font_03_sfnt_off00094b95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x94B95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
7e241c94aeab44a4cd0ca85b03181a2a8f34a81b32bc50b6f6a034bb956c0833		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1714688 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
9bb5c8fffd3df7fb4866c12512be316e79167a2c6ee477ac0a1c9133103bafe3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1693184 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
9e35bd54eb315a33ccaceb35fc63643a86d0d8ab0edcead871996510da659b7e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1550336 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
a9d7f8e545c520b5b4281c67c6265b6489d44511c5e26c0e8251bcca08cc28ea		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1462272 bytes

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