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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 85b0c96ee6b499ca…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.43 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-12-07
MD5: 5d3329ebb6cd67f16ceb4964f2356905 SHA-1: 74629cdc0e5cdd2c84cd1f0837977d3ec9f4e868 SHA-256: 85b0c96ee6b499caf9accc85372a834d3372be74228cb8cd353c651803cd28e9
148 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.005 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This vulnerability allows for arbitrary code execution when the object is processed. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the presence of the exploit indicates a malicious intent to compromise the system upon opening the document.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDI) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDI)
  • 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
1d3b71b8c6234aace88f31f6e674b07383e015a2e68993dcd4fc2526aa470fe5
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 2412 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
1fa1973e942a1fcc1143695ed6b79f0c16ded875f15f22599ea776c0967ceb37
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD013A24BA/olE10natIve 1296 bytes