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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7aed44be2d55ec8c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-20
MD5: 226748156718dc52b9f8fb06a3e2ec87 SHA-1: 862fa574bc1e152920f52a9cd5a299dc90acf6d2 SHA-256: 7aed44be2d55ec8c4f947e12f106744fdc50448b9d20507e2f9fd528e2c8cba3
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1187 Exploitation for Public Facing Application

The file contains 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 executable or archive. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting 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
069dc46fac2c0e47f88642cb995d1d1383866b2690288770ddf1d480254ebdbb		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0036BBE5/OLe10NaTIve 1495 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
70a8baaf3e580b1db3ff3e52caab2c8a2348d7cb85f96eb4f024f341b53ad20b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 780800 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
385ee531f943a4b869c74058c21f1588dc533715d68102079af5bd9fe0168d8a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164288 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
7db86e9680720c750b739465eb11a118789df45d90d98f9bdcafcf318dfb0070		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142272 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
663d4c3e9ca2be2dd19f7aa1c51437b4a7de6ea468dc9d41424becacee3d7898		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 998912 bytes

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