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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 111fbe7d270bd6e9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.27 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-14
MD5: 109c19b99751529819ec174b2eafa03b SHA-1: 565cec1620e25d15a2d444db2dafcc4cd53b2b49 SHA-256: 111fbe7d270bd6e9cbd7dfeea3480adf8881c6039e90b07ed8b18849b2de9f09
392 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is a payload that, when triggered, leads to the execution of a secondary embedded PDF. The PDF itself contains a direct link to a payload, indicating a downloader or dropper functionality. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary exploit mechanism is the OLE object.

Heuristics 10

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • 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 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
a5b8e73fc65b46c01ce6be29386894d1708b32c25111618235d11391bca29e52
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0004937D/Ole10NATIve 1878 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00076c00.pdf
97f831bfbef3f3123c9bee0045245b51065506226c96f9ac5cbbc5046f163c9b
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x76C00 843776 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
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
5b9539f3816883df6844f22d84ba2bbb22a6f80162a12ab355549ed951c2f283
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1326080 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
c7e60f853162aeecae730ef4c76b1420e87438eba6fb19ef03b34f65f80a188a
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1305088 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
b854b0dfabcc0c2e32946512e7acce906115addb985151e98e76ab1830557f3c
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1271296 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely