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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 84aa7ce2dd44e51e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-21
MD5: d58ebe802b92cabdece898514740e9bd SHA-1: 6e2d12710f89d0594425a856da69463133497c1c SHA-256: 84aa7ce2dd44e51e82ae5ec9120d101f290046d449d4ae7d5fed019b64f21820
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

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 VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating they are not the primary vector. The presence of the CVE-2017-11882 exploit and the embedded PDF with a direct payload link strongly suggests a malicious document designed for exploitation.

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
2b73f39da7054e14b1ba1df46cbea83c0122608e268011e571b539d8841a34f6		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000170E3/oLe10NaTivE 1631 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
c329d07914cc8b430e1079ae5a9abaa23b87139c7689965210b26f94ef737c39		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 781312 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
452e14c4fe43ce5a66ae73057cf0f62049bbeb6565517919df87a54609435847		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
8c3d253824734704007d9a129acfb4c30b8866116999379d027cb5868435b32f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142784 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
2736b5eae5a3cd0f2a4c5d3ceb4a8496f6dfb73b1767af6ebf147dac82f04b6a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 999424 bytes

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