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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 167c9f50f62bd115…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-02
MD5: 97c20ea6f9b7f46042b039f1a52b614d SHA-1: fff63b47ee9eceea6e1798e99ff5d939f28d68ce SHA-256: 167c9f50f62bd115e3d0d29f22270ce9c100c4ddc781019d27b7c2483071aeab
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which has suspicious static findings and a direct link to a payload. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely delivered via the OLE object directly. The embedded URL is suspicious and likely leads to a secondary stage payload.

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
532b4fc9b1adae909790768235ca3fc62e69ef596962f2b1d641d846aa8ee618		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000D68D4/OLe10nAtIvE 1381 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00071800.pdf
e33bba8d0809745b0e996ba8e790b59fb469528579cdd19f6c42172685ecd134		 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
31d7746ade36af117207651f5321eb1f2562efe3170ec29c09d7c68a6e95f1cf		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1366528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
5ec78ef04b5984e41bc8bca12ab0ca504ab08d439e982c28690b8d2e6eb5b94c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1344512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
95c439788f617b4b663f09b85ac040a2618ccf892343de7e3ae4ac7923c9b369		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 1202176 bytes

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