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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 649e9cc1261032e6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.22 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-16
MD5: c1a75affe1c99a629a5fb4b3df7359e9 SHA-1: 86e4a29c68354c25cda769698fdd189e9f2f14b1 SHA-256: 649e9cc1261032e6098f6469b87a16e4342c159b29725af71afeb71183513aad
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which has suspicious static findings and a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but appear to contain no executable statements, suggesting the primary exploit vector is the Equation Editor vulnerability.

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
0bedd32ea8c7bec8ef74cc8e5bea59e33d01f9a02d0a98c97ddecca9bc6aa980		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1812 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
805d87d44b56c1f1bc621539b873228c1a4b7eed560e123797d1f19294893642		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0010AD57/oLE10NATIVe 1367 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075400.pdf
159781174f2d63f12bdee63522ffbb3a07ecda813ed10b761551b191acae9445		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75400 801792 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
d5f704660124b688164f3a3fc7215001b5c8f835e65717fbf8285a1b8af05493		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1277440 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
929d14255bfdec3a4250a6bc1e22c8415c9bded173e9bc7c531e9b5e2a582ee6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1255936 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
9a72b88ba74c517bccbb31fc14873ae17d88caeb1a29ef013cc643be0603cf25		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1112576 bytes

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