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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 1221074a4a7b3af8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

875.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-17
MD5: e9920907b056bdd214b6c23f47b2909e SHA-1: 80788153589a48f7c7dfecec565e586e84aa84a3 SHA-256: 1221074a4a7b3af86ed3901e0a805062d266f3e6126d909a38aeea990bca5ecc
292 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The primary finding is the exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 through an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object contains a payload that triggers the download and execution of a secondary PDF file. The PDF itself contains a direct link to a payload, indicating a multi-stage infection chain designed to deliver further malicious content.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • PDF paints image(s) but contains no text operators medium PDF_IMAGE_ONLY_LURE
    PDF has 2 image XObject(s) and the content stream contains no text-emitting operators (BT/ET, Tj, TJ, ', ") in either raw bytes or decompressed streams — this is the screenshot-as-PDF pattern used to bypass text-based scanners and to deliver instructions purely through rendered pixels. It is informational unless paired with invisible links or risky URI context.
  • 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
481031c20227961d1e7d207d0bb17c79a9001efbdb37ac509a4ff93acb047bf0		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 606 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
4a80ca4e3bd53455ee16aadde38fdacc1839177eb3a73e7396e95a3a8d575a5d		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001043D8/OlE10NatIvE 1673 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00000e00.pdf
02ed6249ff0f00a3de77a7c099e3d9f8dde08c533b420ba2bd4133e1ae52833f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE00 892928 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
7bc943b57deea437a4dec64ee59d26d883d18c50fd9419bf7ac3426654bbb8cf		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 870912 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
e439e16a8263f73967b1cabf9863c85eeeafebd10df561b73b3b3798cf0cb54c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 727552 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00048000.pdf
7f44b2f1483cb557096af72b3de9da7d2e8d9195e73f2c439b98166e4efa9a93		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x48000 601600 bytes

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