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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 21c629b3a8dfeafe…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-19
MD5: 74ce2a73295c15d85b6f1cab6321d4b1 SHA-1: c67887c2c7803a71c9b710aca66972e15171cc61 SHA-256: 21c629b3a8dfeafe9d2ff779b9e33128530ec3db5660a9693dcddb576908eb86
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself.

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
c1a96da9878f2255fa0f3d955ca286d24456053b9871858989d82c43ae4de801		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0008A933/oLE10NatiVe 1637 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
847afe52bbc0ffcd03b6a4e14bf5c21e904f02e3e6c1ca5aa09b60fbb5b79f4d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 781312 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
7a2e22e5039f1067de7b46c8112662c1a430b78a162e594c8cf8e5401042b060		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
57a9f833bd91e0e0c0229dd71d5b2f5c780acb83ff06eea4cb0dd87c456dfe0d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142784 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
1fad45748ecdde04e11a33ff278ea671a3858285f37929ed02cad29dab57c7d7		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 999424 bytes

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