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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 264ff24ba8d755c8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.29 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-26
MD5: be4b2d141d89136100df91bf9ec67938 SHA-1: 80e8158b18502cd741690b04d2a655e442f2d118 SHA-256: 264ff24ba8d755c8463c2038796b476f77cd06b7af930dc771239c95afc1a611
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet 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 benign and do not appear to be directly involved in the exploit chain.

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
362ecfb30b8f0a1b5a34ec4013937b7fabb613013d5ffe03c880db0f5745192c		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0002CC73/OLe10nAtIVe 1681 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006f800.pdf
afbae55027020ea657b94a2eabeedfa27fece4c1d73e8f0f8335eac00069d5b6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6F800 892928 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
50431d618aee8ff67ae8c895eb014f7e6911aaf66963cd7bec0c29a210c47c3e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1345536 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
cd06599803084fb120d5517cf693bf2cf7df183f24357afcb3dbb481bc96ac23		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1323520 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
4df8f7ef863806f13a715d1861df70d8b840d4d29e715f18bb60aede0e466c7e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1180160 bytes

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