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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3880b045f8ac37a0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.16 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-18
MD5: 041f6f5efc54c7da313ffdf9c69322c6 SHA-1: 2d9575f9f061100c966447788eaf388cc915e0be SHA-256: 3880b045f8ac37a059cab5938f0fb792ff6f005da1f9186167d1cde77a7d6c43
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to a suspicious URL. The VBA macros are benign and do not appear to contribute to the malicious functionality.

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
e3ccbf1035423d74b0abf9682d1ff7f35eb3f00a1220adac5604793034ce8527
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0013A43C/OLE10natIVE 1433 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
ed8698df77961e8ca5ad8c06809f7c9d41de5fb819efed349b03b60e143253cb
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1207296 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
ede37c37b2781e5343ab65d7760eae79f59ea9262d1ad7fc3e317ccb5751c6c9
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1186304 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
f92e73b89005a9db65fe67a3c886cc52ddfea2b152ecc812bcb3a1c5ffdeccf3
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1152512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
069e7e5b8366e845e4fbde698b764794bf613db188c647898cd1518c2cbfb061
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1064448 bytes