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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 980366b07b053cde…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.54 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-26
MD5: fcef7ff704a548496bdcb9aa344c1ef7 SHA-1: 814f6eb96a6382428db126060dbdf17ab123f2b1 SHA-256: 980366b07b053cde767887e94f399806120d74354ef34fd6f8b4f31010b10c40
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

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, contains a direct link to a URL. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object.

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
e62f0e5b51bbb65f269b54889182d9d2b4b6cdd968c3da4297c7584fa4525edf		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD002314AD/oLE10NaTIVe 1568 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
02a3084792c4216a5b54e9f7bed5ea2e4701969f00f9eb6554a733d0f0ae2a70		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1612800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
a595574ca1f625e16e948619372d0c05bd91328a022af5e9b13f2eb0b57a9f71		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1592320 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
554a2d01a3a08efc565d47008993249c0c767a36ef3eccab882295e16dee6ac6		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1558528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
6b551b5abec53fa310fa1a3174c0afe9dc9bc266490aa7181a86501447e4bf4d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1470464 bytes

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