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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 73be7a22c3bf4ddc…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

967.0 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-17
MD5: 42db68ec803c474a2400e75724057b4f SHA-1: 47e174aefaa93b05bdc7e0c91923a3b8d8f1ee5b SHA-256: 73be7a22c3bf4ddcd0cf8c6ff0a90816e49566bca5d54ec0014d86a45e639071
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an external URL. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality is within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

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
f1866daef306dcfb9a276394fc2cde20623263a3c055fc2c9e39e8276150e0ce		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001763BD/olE10NAtive 1716 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
9b1ff4227aa11bf1f01b89020bc83a59f64ae93cdab8e33108442b29aa7cafb7		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 602624 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
a1c6e8b8386a166290698f8ad4681536d215b8b7b65b6064e76106e9790f2f81		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 985600 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
e974a28d3a95885c2bce2dda98c7c9f980d6b10497629c2b3915ab2eedaae7f1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 964096 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
ad26d10ba008b665a46db1d7a9ce07bd7858036675ede829063a5e4a53890696		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 820736 bytes

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