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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3e4660d96763c73a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.12 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-19
MD5: 6d065053f461331ac2b2ea8c8b4fc135 SHA-1: 7de9c1e44f4f64c3e698fbaeda05369edcafc6e7 SHA-256: 3e4660d96763c73a97e3db9a085a19e389b6bd95928e5477e583fc0c42fbce53
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which, in turn, has a direct link to a payload. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting a deliberate attempt to conceal its malicious nature. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the presence of the exploit and the malicious link within the embedded PDF are strong indicators of a downloader or exploit delivery mechanism.

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
a6a2b3408ba7f7a282d9070953361b60e1a9514c0af5ee43fb4afa61b1ee22eb		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00019253/olE10natiVE 1728 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
871c5e0353642b7469e2678afde77b1b72ccb728584475977fcdcd56f74971ca		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 782336 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
1a802df54a0fd742c18b24e80fce062380370a05646ca4977141aedc3ca1efe4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1165824 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
c148ed48ecab103b5ec442f8edba5efd9cef32756c5c2d1b985f8420f87dd12c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1143808 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
c8bd07b5b3a5aab4ca445f567b68bc8929eb040b74c44bd614d6debb8768a21b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1000448 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.