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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 909842fc11f72656…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.55 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-25
MD5: cd8bafbe22a50eb3b052b8c14faa4ab9 SHA-1: f1ac69b9f67feeaad4a13e8051fc000909530a03 SHA-256: 909842fc11f726568caceac27de46ea00589d6ff5f2fee956f9e9cc206d4bcbf
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 OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object embeds a PDF file which contains a direct link to a suspicious URL, likely intended to download a secondary payload. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality resides within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

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 8

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
30347d33e6bfc7225934642d7d7ad3513409407aa41e61a24821317da00fdd57		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001574A2/OLe10nativE 1642 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off00007f7d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7F7D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009d95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9D95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
08e5e1d03e73e5e9ed4d68a74e4541427550c38d715f2abef693250b70d88a1d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1618432 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
b4e0c0a1835f507f2a539860ffec6ac2b8e025ab4ca670992d50dcdc4b6ddf36		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1597952 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
539abe02b1f4eb4ea5d13664da492b4713c9fdc0e1892459d1a0f29e9c6509fc		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1564160 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
7988a496f5e31d1a937d30e3d014fe61e8b5ac770026f0b2d1018249563237db		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1476096 bytes

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