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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 99aaf14a36a775ed…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.25 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-21
MD5: 7b90b740a0bc15ca58cfedfd73a70e20 SHA-1: d2e4837961ebb6bccf23b54f8c65a89b66e6e7fa SHA-256: 99aaf14a36a775eda9587258d24e47a8337bd62883c47e05eb2e4a9abd413e3d
272 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

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor object known to exploit CVE-2017-11882. This object is linked to a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary exploit mechanism is 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://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
6d3bf99b16c6e7c57ab8eacdbf82bf2c1ee9fb6e94c15f08b0de7348ef3cd452		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0036118A/Ole10nATiVe 1455 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00060c00.pdf
b32b2d115abc5b3d9c7dee1b44b446a10faed7cda4e46ae8f10da69f4c116371		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x60C00 912384 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
f8f9bfdf235e1eed0ba77f867baf14f6d4ade0f319cfdecfea5c143a7c34e790		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1304576 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
b63df04bd17f4ab7cf9d4a6b5924673abdf27aa2fae765d663eabb607f7ebe38		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1282560 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
a0eb017d56204a7eecb998d55b5882912a6498f2ac8d3c55573262e41361fb51		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1139200 bytes

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