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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 95f512905d4b5ebe…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.42 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-18
MD5: bebde97040eeecb866db4f6eff2a0f3c SHA-1: eef9d50a9ee55acc5c4c389d5a0f3105a14ccf96 SHA-256: 95f512905d4b5ebe18ec19e3a3b2dffbd727e91fdc0177667512b44fc7f5d857
332 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter 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 a payload. The ClamAV detection name 'Xls.Downloader' further suggests its role as a downloader. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality is within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
  • 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 9

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
a83b4113755dab7984a0a56f48a9d909acdd42f84b0d1c6c2f518d854c409d7c		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00324A3D/olE10NATIVe 1320 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0008ec00.pdf
e250b71e2a3d6b4e082b17b7d7a87cf3c7fa190131743eadf9f362cd01d69530		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x8EC00 907776 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off0002b17d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2B17D 12100 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off0002cf95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2CF95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
5ec4cc49f60080f1e8c580943ec65e8db216fd5229568baa82a1425a4629ab2d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1487872 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
6ea3a0da628fbbaca42387dfef827c056229f630c0f0055d8c6bd0d06ef85cef		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 1465856 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
b79037946661d90d485a52d6a7ff76e960575bbe6f1cd1f8d3b0e1d178d87e77		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1323520 bytes

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