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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3631cef235754ade…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.43 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-21
MD5: affd47cfa5f9b6138138bbcf3d9bd01a SHA-1: 09f8d0372d30cee602b51543fb1e47e41bf99146 SHA-256: 3631cef235754ade0b7e46898abd5c69f736439897e28b16c141b3e1c8780389
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The XLS file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, when opened, links to an external URL. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting a deliberate attempt to conceal its malicious nature.

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
b937a4ecae0e581a35718d5acd0c66752715402e6e27c54db091f1038463d89f		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001FAF44/Ole10native 1155 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
cb389249d003a6fdbebe4f78a74ec15c3f5d5fd36a357eacffc59d24196c19e1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1496064 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
513a8bb1f86b5f5a9db366d3ac39b0ef95818d8577a9decb3fa9cae3f44739f8		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1475584 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
095a01e6d15edb84f9cf269b11c0d94643c348bf6378a8f3644c5865faa44351		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1441792 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
d8e4d1edd34405db0a4d34e3085c5328ee442f5f6c0089e986e8366c4068afe0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1353728 bytes

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