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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 90bb2c755b155a32…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.03 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-15
MD5: 26e0bf9119180baa0ab9d4e7d2266df5 SHA-1: 94d11a67e0000051bc8bc484c720d073f4dacbee SHA-256: 90bb2c755b155a326d01efdde09d05ed077c66c36fe7cfc18478cc79b808160e
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1204 User Execution

The sample leverages the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability through an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object appears to be a polyglot file that contains a PDF. The PDF itself has suspicious findings, including a direct link to a payload at the URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com, and employs parser evasion techniques. No VBA macros were found to be executable.

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
a50970ed85e1f99a98c5c7789ef1c3a4859815ebbf08211009ed2f63a51018e7		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000C889F/OLe10NatiVE 1882 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00059600.pdf
013d072ddf51583e26318fd943f121cf018d95a276532089738785d76f3e13ba		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x59600 714240 bytes
stream_001_off00000960.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x960 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001400.pdf
e79382a5342cd196b6cfe2e9087f7cbd7814725a36fb767ebe31e49b1b6353f6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1400 1075200 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00024200.pdf
e4e24afca29b1bdd00c647f132179fc77a87edf5f56ad502663fc0c226a09919		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x24200 932352 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00042e00.pdf
259cb2c4a0a61c854c469eda0cc6d15d9bed2f7e85f00236445031c09b9b6b5a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x42E00 806400 bytes

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