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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9551948033c4f230…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.24 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-08
MD5: 4c1054974ecd5239cf3f803567edd74a SHA-1: bbd5aa5aba5c4b7bf0bd75823331f1df87124b47 SHA-256: 9551948033c4f230d2f00b5dcb154d0e75b6f8b62e206558d4723bdf53b2467c
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which, in turn, contains a direct link to a payload. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is solely within the OLE object and the subsequent 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://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
5fc81ad6f4e4c264f4d999e66e63158f75ceefb9bb202d43fabd932c95e1f4b6		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001F6340/oLE10NAtivE 1663 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f600.pdf
801aea9dc34fa8c4e31855edc4f5db09113ed72d7c50c60606a41f90f4b8f6c2		 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
b78f1cd609d4d8b40ebdd9872a5ebbe486bf47f410a4797ddcaeef30f5712bd3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1291776 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
8ffa45f15a08089ada29dfb1a0f67f047a73a42ad6a478b5fc809070c1138721		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1269760 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
09831b2d7b790965d673827b63c99b39179f043eac25a8a08e84704f73024f32		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1126400 bytes

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