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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 82e401d39af96eea…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.13 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-21
MD5: 662563c03fc916022a12497e88a10d3d SHA-1: 7893a736f3ea8879f8d89bb4d4488292ae99f2cc SHA-256: 82e401d39af96eea296217869480b1e0a13a03d873a93e2d4cc56d510e67a33b
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to a URL that is likely intended to download a further stage. The VBA macros themselves do not contain executable statements, but the overall structure points to a multi-stage exploit chain.

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
da26f9baa18be0c223edcfc57b6b2427f58974e1cf1d86da4accb1cb2f7f4df8		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000438FD/olE10naTIvE 1315 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00060c00.pdf
0ab10a36823e5013cfea004acb2e1e9a3f30356a51fd8770d8d4f246db134df4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x60C00 790528 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
7e7e0e63ba3fc5d9d125d3540e39ec03605f077d0fbe090f4c3b9113fdc1c4bb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1182720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
ef8d711b18741d98d6ba824905058628b7156720b1fdf00e84c24df520bef062		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1160704 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
ac4bf4b361b24fa470e6430f421b0c0cdd2bd864c41eb3f412ae4060b442072c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1017344 bytes

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