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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4f4d7aaefa854a05…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.15 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-29
MD5: cba61d984ae8339c72be6a7e979d9d5f SHA-1: dccc8755c2427194debea84f45e81b5c6cfad13c SHA-256: 4f4d7aaefa854a0540e992bf81817a622e3a68c5a5a1d6d15caffc48bbe44cbc
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample contains an OLE object with an embedded Equation Editor payload, specifically targeting CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which, in turn, has a direct link to an executable payload at the URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the presence of the Equation Editor exploit and the malicious PDF link strongly indicate a downloader or dropper functionality.

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
4735a7686f28beca7a3cf213c565da707095c7f8aca022ef4b7338b6f54a8f11		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD002E7E8A/oLE10NAtIve 1411 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006c800.pdf
df60670ab7049edda32d899e3114317c4aeb971d06fd25012c15a08a0e7cbada		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6C800 764928 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
de284f75017acbf7d0836e67f8c760d789dc40bd445ba8040b47179ca7cb1e58		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1205248 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
3ac42313eb0b6cd0d302d405dcfa3c737076e8c4e0f08363710e114122a180da		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1183232 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
fea93adca90a56e32417268280d7652b7ed198d12f8e664f5826bf0118a0056d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1039872 bytes

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