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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 98004180695e46ec…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

986.5 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-09
MD5: 892d548be8a96091412a8bb2d078424f SHA-1: 2ac5fc56e42588a8938c6e090930f5e9a60c11f4 SHA-256: 98004180695e46eca5fda91d708b1f37a2aa158094d9cb92e449d00e7caafcd7
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1187 Exploitation for Client Execution

The XLS file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE 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 empty, indicating the exploit is solely reliant on the OLE object and the embedded PDF. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques and points to the suspicious URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com.

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 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
96884847d2c30e035e951824f9a32aa2427cae7f58655a034cabf5e66c58e56c		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001EE4ED/OLe10nativE 1489 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00050600.pdf
ac0c6b671087cf1ab0d70e2a9bedaa29834d1a0b45cf045b5a4d652bfa505a9a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x50600 680960 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
8262b3a1484ddcf54e7b62505b451aef32102f709d59d41b334f8d9a89e0fa74		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1005568 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
11f46297053920684572859b4e1795cdfc927c83641e379f3d6cbab4761bf377		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 983552 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00025400.pdf
43f42a2427769a5882e6b2a7905175fd2b6774d2d5022d38bf826401c15939f4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x25400 857600 bytes

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