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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 15a9b4955307e00b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-02
MD5: 721c7c5fa8ff2aff44d22e5e8fbb9006 SHA-1: e52b63fd760ce37d67534b00bb8f3d4481e5e569 SHA-256: 15a9b4955307e00b1a7bbbede22f1807440da619614dcadcd0d234ca15abf430
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The file contains an OLE object exploiting CVE-2017-11882, which is a known vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor. This object embeds a PDF file that contains a direct link to a payload. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting an attempt to deliver a malicious file. No VBA macros were found to be executable.

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
9cefe12c96c5409f6bc74866f55db6d236d3626131e1768f6983b97527ee4fc0		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0009769F/OLE10NaTivE 1534 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00071800.pdf
228b6fb1f9a3858c188a78db8293235526ffc3d7690584f9fb70ac2285be1a3f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x71800 905728 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
92bc1ede3ad9ead78cf8d4f1fc7e073aa67652543dcc97e930cfe8013355cf2e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1366528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
9a94a78d542cdbcdc05988b07a1cdd90b821c1185ebb62040af4ba6d9f453de2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1344512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
6e0c3539925f97a456b3e75426d95f72988536d0a0b71b1f7229682079de9b2d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 1202176 bytes

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