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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6258b8e8bbf80228…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.04 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-12
MD5: 2e18b3bf34a04349a0f111d6012e5608 SHA-1: a17162e556ed3b1785e6bd832bb028ec0c8c9c2c SHA-256: 6258b8e8bbf8022844df845024281f326ee69ca2d0c18685060da4f31fc109fd
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is solely within the OLE object.

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
0facd935e71ce8937a743da38f6db6d88b03fa653705b36ab8ef3c88e61f3148		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0017CC1D/ole10NaTIvE 2083 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006d000.pdf
6530b3a0aee7bb3edab582b9e97fce4a208b355b5539a8c94da3ad69ad0ecb9b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6D000 647680 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
fdea39b5745e8f72abd8fa42e0ea0cd3367e6906568617746f403cd5a57280c9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1089536 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
1ddb8c73f39a29fef80247dfd9ea332e7b6580c59403adb1c74f2140b42b0652		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1068032 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
bdfa215b606f74ff078591e4fb6caf4e0f4a2bcea190c70f687eb5724829cd6f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 924672 bytes

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