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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 28d442e84385d049…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.72 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-03
MD5: df319f519dad4abc644dc6ffe975020e SHA-1: 12d45ccea684c449e561d6553530bd0fc80163c9 SHA-256: 28d442e84385d04999a70982af89686000826bdfbd2cd4b6a515de4d65f11fa8
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

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, contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is solely within the OLE object.

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
125a897f03fd5ed1d2798456a33eb0c49bacb1f80c43ce14a5ef8e6cb9e77793		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD002AE8DF/olE10NatIVE 1738 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0008d400.pdf
87be1910dc6db21ca218f4cfbb262a12c5df3745f6f49650b2f71680b4ac98e0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x8D400 1226752 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
d602f56342e5ffcab099d01ba219065b4f54685ed4308988ccc2cd38fb0b7cb8		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1801216 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
f61a0c02beeabee53c044c1a46b7f7775b0b92b0cd394ba734e1ea15f071b423		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1779200 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
3072466b03d5b5cb7320b77b9b89cd960ea7f8b539c5f1efbbc8e90a8965aad4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1635840 bytes

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