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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8da4349af395f2b6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-22
MD5: 344aec43e478218ea592e0eedc9a9a43 SHA-1: 1350dc057e79086f07478d6d42829b54d17d9fed SHA-256: 8da4349af395f2b6bb89302731277940f2d3633a6b3c03e5633695d83ccb902a
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.002 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, has a direct link to an executable or archive. 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. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques and a direct payload link.

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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 6

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
58569028f981fb811b79d5ef4ff2c38641e3c503326b964f7befd73c1d354cd2		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00101602/ole10natIvE 1461 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f200.pdf
0caa909ad16f450a137db687b27b8b4211ebcac9275cb5f7db56ac59cabef372		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F200 894976 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
d01a0dbec75663eb9a2555c4468e7b030eee4a5d5d2a52f7d654abac3bb67de9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1280512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
3aa367a8954ca6432678aae0f8b3624a960388b6530393593c4ed7c8e8db059e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 1259008 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00019000.pdf
e6bd93f73f75c174237685d7fb20c09c77bc54cd949e7fcfe0608b837adb0386		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x19000 1182208 bytes

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