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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 443da952be6a5085…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-19
MD5: e1e52390d48ca61b3eb43b3666ab68ca SHA-1: c4bf72ae8716cefc7ecba815d8989c6d5570785b SHA-256: 443da952be6a508538204a92d80b93ff9fda0c3d541293ff92004bde25b420e9
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object, which is a known vector for exploiting CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload that includes a direct link to a URL, likely intended to download and execute further malicious content. The VBA macros themselves do not contain executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality resides within the embedded OLE object and the subsequent PDF.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ECX) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ECX)
  • 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
5f7a79829174e401510af37f6a8626922d366c0d9ac53a3957e28497868d2397		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000169BE/Ole10NatIve 1400 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
9bbe6b56d0665baab0a5157d92249b816f9c7c8a1d0382f853c6ee335e4a55ee		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 780800 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
7f8ebc89c96e7b0ada3ff58243a04f0d93d37b499ac17778b7dd30e8e2e0c9c0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164288 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
573d6f2688e453712d74a6586f6415835452a8491f5050754feb111e75cf8b21		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142272 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
ac9795761b4abea89584e9baae021026c675455384ae81595ff5c43622cc093c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 998912 bytes

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