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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3ffdbd6313ee7a77…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.07 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-10
MD5: a61343fd709707870ee50538d93ff372 SHA-1: 9f3c794040544f41aaa47732a5d5ee332f2a27e7 SHA-256: 3ffdbd6313ee7a772587e71ebea333bd68b10bcf9f65c499b79dfc41f25691ed
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking 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, in turn, has a direct link to an external URL. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality is within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

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
c8021df623115fd63a010a0df6b6a984c3d86783c69fc0ad16d9885d2c2cc462		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000BC91A/OLE10NAtIVE 1719 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00069e00.pdf
0703d590454cf711f9a0e1fcd7a4232f95de2ef24e19fc3491a944b5e9c5c86f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x69E00 686080 bytes
stream_001_off00000960.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x960 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001400.pdf
83ba3c95b1cb51009a1d1a666bfa7100c84c027e81455c002fcf3c94f73872dc		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1400 1114624 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00024200.pdf
267fe47f5ad1c25b51de4a300c1530b2fbfe94c35c6b2d470b4b17a14f7b3c61		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x24200 971776 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00043000.pdf
4958ac2e9113b6e8643e6e0fce1661a2affbd7f65a96ead397af86796a99e414		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x43000 845312 bytes

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