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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 33cc1948aef1d96e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.43 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-28
MD5: 00b74c5057b113ded149ed0b45dbe1a6 SHA-1: ef4afa9810b7bec0d0d1e9a2336d3531d077f8a5 SHA-256: 33cc1948aef1d96eaa733345f427a2fd48d86d8621510ae754fc4cba16aba619
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel document 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 present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 8

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
b523a4352c5e75f19cc7ec9dbe42897e17aa94efa49840a28c2cb614cbacfe08		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0012A61B/oLe10naTivE 1610 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off00007f7d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7F7D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009d95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9D95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
251a46ba1b382c1f4fd5e363ff93a94096007c2a14a8858972164fc69cc89dfa		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1490432 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
de4b3bc1e3ea18a638a91fa5ebf93946aeba68b9d2b7f1e45479c1ba4b9d5175		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1469952 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
134838833b4c7416b4cde782bb9e493b202044ce6ca875b47758dec225aa73eb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1436160 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
6fb27c4008da365da5054512f6d850e64e873aa7192fb78879bcd1b889746924		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1348096 bytes

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