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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3aba22f154759171…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.17 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-10
MD5: 236da22e6156640a59aa5339e68394b1 SHA-1: 9e19df439bdb1498e88a6c520ada36eb63705ec4 SHA-256: 3aba22f15475917127717c2e212d04a04e0b75c513681cb85de9fa1623637ce0
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which has suspicious static findings and a direct link to a payload. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself.

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
ad2d2ad689361b00a74817af4ce9f8d7b75cb1d27aded5c682e746859a76edf3		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000B17CA/OLe10natIVe 1556 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002b800.pdf
1201bdb3ddd3c5f6cb1fc3168a1c68d4be58879951828d53d26dde7a700eb009		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2B800 1047552 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
34d3c44ea7101f372cbd3cb9091ec696a31840fab22959e896ee351126812ad3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1221120 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
6be9266786e4b252fc5b61c06fa4b99bec8e627fe35f5d59e401e581e60957e5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 1199104 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004a400.pdf
10fb13e966fcab20d90312e729b4b2e3ec61a55d4395b138d3cb8a447438a7be		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4A400 921600 bytes

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