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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9ec15221b5d02192…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.05 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-19
MD5: de0aea0706ec4a4bbce963671ad890d5 SHA-1: 365ba39c791bc5aa16fce672bbea3d24f467488c SHA-256: 9ec15221b5d021929dc382445e850cfd54ba558397f22b12c7beac36d6184242
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample 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 present but contain no executable statements, indicating they are not the primary execution vector. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques.

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 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
a97ac7a82e31f945087245143766bdba52df2775c3f91adc144f229c9a055045		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0015F9DB/OLE10natIVe 1087 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
c22e314eda34395400ecf7e5dfd0c75af1adc4cf3f09ed7751593f79c1d4d530		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1098752 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
30eab758028ee86f07d9742a17ffbd3b0974a07e1cbbae586ceae1c0c75bba18		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1077760 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e400.pdf
e5b3a4cae4367efa0ff4d5e08bc237f61c834f5c2578e9c7ee1bf17724986e73		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE400 1044480 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0001de00.pdf
738a4edbb6c27fb6ee5cf2adaaa42d009c32f61262b1e05f04e04e9fee9b714e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1DE00 980480 bytes

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