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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 20b5e22a6955b715…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-13
MD5: 598d71289f14f049c7c41acd0063322d SHA-1: 842bb20d1671d0848cd3a56de52177e48e65efd0 SHA-256: 20b5e22a6955b71534fa6b3b0f4b565edc129398be7b021797ab6e97a03b55dc
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Link

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object, a known indicator for the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability. This object is used to deliver a secondary PDF payload which contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain malicious logic themselves, but the primary threat stems from the exploit and the embedded PDF.

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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EBP) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EBP)
  • 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
0bedd32ea8c7bec8ef74cc8e5bea59e33d01f9a02d0a98c97ddecca9bc6aa980		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1812 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
956e1ba849021b332952f6660d63f38fedd36cf69296ff5c931595a59733426b		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000979A2/olE10nAtIvE 1480 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075400.pdf
c6211c045fdcbb3b04ce0a8d9f6fb4d69a0579a470d6714d5e4c2938833157c0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75400 687104 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
0607c6ce734ec1f6715c772dbbdf75762a95c5102b615f35fd6309354f9cd47f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1162752 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
0fbded1d1c23df8d50c05e921e2db84bc2837bb7c2e8681e736fdd1f088ac8c1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1141248 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
edec65d7ac76adbe3cfc7363c81740056981514acd4a6b716179b0c585f46ebc		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 997888 bytes

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