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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 10f5af8eb8756da0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-20
MD5: b4f3a5054f0e99f8d3f01a7012ea591d SHA-1: 07742c8f6bb67a596e4a742445d5923c9f4f35e4 SHA-256: 10f5af8eb8756da0b191701980fa8558ddd19fa6ed62b94f1972294fcd80471f
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE 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 exploit is likely within the OLE object itself. The embedded PDF also exhibits suspicious static findings and parser evasion techniques.

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
65989485400649ab850d12aef2270945ce5acccf0aaa37e2354536df66b12f27		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000111DA/OlE10NaTive 1475 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
ed0f3c3c89a35ea57a676ef9210fbc4c690020936e602cf97303c1d5e46e1b5e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 780800 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
d4808e2385a68a8dcc1a252837f9534d2e280873b0a1f3ac51ad5e64e70a32c5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164288 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
c1d71b58c597e2a34f01cf345779dabc8ff743b8e72a0ce7c7a8b2eed0bfd0b2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142272 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
f551f6d5071a9342d48c9bc3ed4c36dc959481ea2ca2608fae87758e2879e086		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 998912 bytes

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