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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 45b41b91bd67b7c9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.16 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-18
MD5: e3cb47d343e755df1b7a9b0c6c178f41 SHA-1: 3059409bfb1b1ca97649e6d44069434bff9d9033 SHA-256: 45b41b91bd67b7c902855ea8c70ac83bb61c4dc08332b9f90e57c607ddaa4686
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

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, indicating an attempt to download and execute a further stage of malware. The VBA macros are benign, but the critical heuristics point to a multi-stage attack leveraging a known vulnerability and a malicious 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 EAX) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EAX)
  • 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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 8

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
bd7ac654d89215ab714693f77a604a3c5bc2b37513bf210f7afe6781d5a8d8c4		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0012F938/OLE10Native 1568 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
75f3d238ba29dccffcdbdd99aa5eb900f5960a1ae5c8fc205b1a97547c82bf48		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1207296 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
51e1e8d09aca73e981f1d44afb4e900b2c69875883e4f4b8d76369a15e6b9520		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1186304 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
a5e8b4a85c17883cfddc53b17c029d2eab0f6a49973d8e098c0ff9c4b6b7f191		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1152512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
595f3039adc3441664b556dd9b103c6e487056b0fae16436d74d5944b7d73ccf		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1064448 bytes

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