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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 88a67c811fe45a1b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.24 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-11
MD5: 496794e6a0e84b28a2616279ebf48f85 SHA-1: f05a60ee7b0dff6142539973394b6d4f8f24b52a SHA-256: 88a67c811fe45a1b016ae185becc9992cc08c8f5bf228880a63b5dc742a1913a
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The XLS 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 empty, indicating the exploit is likely delivered through the OLE object.

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
6d3c93eb1e19209afaad4ea365e9c6dcc49783b836ff597c5d1e0f10c783a5a3		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00168F95/OLe10NAtiVe 1769 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f600.pdf
d38984edd3db2e92ebc9aa703158509c8e326f6ce74baf5a1f4bbf78a204cd3c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F600 905216 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
b9043ab4e22319a9b369a60637027973462554f938d56cf30052c2fb40a13628		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1291776 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
1c5911acf343856cf31f83bdfba871e35ed77594ea11e22635323fe19c0be378		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1269760 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
7a42f274bcf15df18c815b2bf1d600e85962343b805e859888da956988dc0e0e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1126400 bytes

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