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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7332e56b52d09937…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.66 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-01
MD5: 345dc5533c4c20b89d20e75aff3023fe SHA-1: d05b645116d0ee6806fb9e4026220aac3e0709bd SHA-256: 7332e56b52d0993782b3e13e6ebcfb45d6fdb7367e46a3eafe1bae387817ccef
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Click T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor object, identified as a critical finding for CVE-2017-11882. This object likely serves as a dropper for a secondary PDF payload. The PDF itself contains a direct link to an executable or archive, indicated by the 'PDF_DIRECT_PAYLOAD_LINK' heuristic. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is 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 ESI) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ESI)
  • 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 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
29d9fb576541f0c7053f5d3779b704e163631a9cdadf769993c7b7740cda0dd2		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000BCF54/OLe10NaTivE 1506 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
5c05891091dce9777a3c72e4bf94ae364bc1f044bd69cef3791b943fb498f3da		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1731072 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
7ba38c3b1f41a9ab74e57533f4de3f20a263c4728c3939ccbd4780e1a8cf03ca		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1709568 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
df174c9599eca5ac99784261aa5ab41d5f1fdf40d8eccba4242f2bc4b5354f5f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1566720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
7067cf87ae0919ac50b1396686be2351fc882794c2444eae433000e2ecbfca2c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1478656 bytes

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