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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3e4ea5fc91fc6e8d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-02
MD5: b8284006e98faf1c51cd87d869adc01d SHA-1: e7c56c51e7a549f34fc007ec2e81f39cca9d88b4 SHA-256: 3e4ea5fc91fc6e8d4dce00e2b8ca83944940d41f2a308aa55decef166e90089a
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 T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is configured to deliver a secondary PDF payload. The PDF itself contains a direct link to an executable or archive payload, indicating a multi-stage infection chain. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the OLE object and embedded PDF are the primary vectors.

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
387ca07e47ad0f3492a9453cbcebb9ed026568cb6a3c06f0037f710074a30a35		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0000B80D/ole10nAtiVe 1601 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00071800.pdf
3f405a285938c138f1a8a3128c3a34bacc50a7c786a5d0a428a5f22a80f7a382		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x71800 905728 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
938f6cce40f7063272481019c05c88598efa553131d840e6d0a777c548f7e882		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1366528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
3782671986e065bd45708d145989d0c98c22c27654c59fbbc53f3329305d113d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1344512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
3152116f908726aa7df71e4eda3ae44d381a6599b37c6a9af013e59e6fa3d5f6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 1202176 bytes

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