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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 36187a12d7c1ecfa…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.25 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-05
MD5: 887a03e8eea6d69d8191ba1755bb83d9 SHA-1: 46f0e67a127ab61c667124e513bb038e09d82621 SHA-256: 36187a12d7c1ecfa21aecc61434224ec977217961e85d29a6f15a2f4c32423fb
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE 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. The presence of a direct payload link in the PDF points to a delivery mechanism for further malicious content.

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
4731569eefbf25c467f152f5f91f4e6f25bb18678a64073610729459621d9f48		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0061F417/Ole10natiVe 1495 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00060c00.pdf
d604404941cefa53e1d943a0415123bf90f8e489356a87fb84283e420b59031e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x60C00 911872 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
020541c81b6b4c4ff3badf452ec176cdf9e3ebb3cf51fdc271839b0e2b6f7e2b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1304064 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
fb4a6ab33f0cd8d2ef76815bd84d3dc22ae179687bc8690acdb06b53469895d4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1282048 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
33bc0917be7e2f2d5997a8c919a34f55ddc7331025984f9a2c7c4078f2a63d46		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1138688 bytes

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