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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 78ce16d28d23b470…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

677.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2026-04-14
MD5: 5153ef969156e36db29829a3718d9df5 SHA-1: 767cf3182e2dfe22e3db349d5ac7eaac01183db2 SHA-256: 78ce16d28d23b47057cb1f978f00cbd75833d90d9fbab9e5c0c2f102854844a4
108 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The critical heuristic firing indicates the presence of a payload exploiting CVE-2017-11882 within an Equation Editor OLE object. This vulnerability is commonly used to execute arbitrary code, suggesting the file's primary purpose is to exploit this flaw. No VBA macros were found to be executable, and the document body was heavily corrupted, providing no further context.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
Preview script
First 1,000 lines of the extracted script
Attribute VB_Name = "ThisWorkbook"
Attribute VB_Base = "0{00020819-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = False
Attribute VB_Customizable = True

Attribute VB_Name = "Sheet1"
Attribute VB_Base = "0{00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = False
Attribute VB_Customizable = True

Attribute VB_Name = "Sheet2"
Attribute VB_Base = "0{00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = False
Attribute VB_Customizable = True

Attribute VB_Name = "Sheet3"
Attribute VB_Base = "0{00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
Attribute VB_GlobalNameSpace = False
Attribute VB_Creatable = False
Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True
Attribute VB_Exposed = True
Attribute VB_TemplateDerived = False
Attribute VB_Customizable = True
ole10native_00.bin
ba99f43c013f1f3d90e95fd72f6475c5fa81145fbb41372715bca7a488371fac
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD025CA1BB/OLe10natIvE 1909 bytes