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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9a42980c6e732e42…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.54 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-26
MD5: d73000c25e058145cac4f41f4d27928f SHA-1: 3f053274d8300f27003b14b272f39a9d01c25144 SHA-256: 9a42980c6e732e426166bc1d842e17f40249a0ce39c2b28d07928fdfb8fb616d
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution T1059.005 Visual Basic

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object known to exploit CVE-2017-11882. This object is used to deliver a secondary PDF payload which contains a direct link to a suspicious URL. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting an attempt to conceal malicious activity. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the primary threat stems from the Equation Editor exploit and the embedded 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://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
2e2eaa39ad888bdad4d990b7224f910e84a09a8187798b0a7f828287852fb3b9		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00086564/ole10NAtiVE 1420 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
cbd3b280120e61be14de98be2cd48a987f7eafc0bb9d6d24b6e77d7d3b2c5e8c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1612800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
543fad42a9f75394f1bdf38365e649d5cdf9d74958542a0b27a9b7759534e529		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1592320 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
228456848b51dc8d9f1b68c8147cd7728b1e85e98c0592b467eed2c1af38939f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1558528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
a9048a1fbb5fa1581931c7b390d0a614b0b15299fbedf0124cf84df504aa70be		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1470464 bytes

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