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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a85d683fc6906637…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.66 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-03
MD5: d45b28567911c9de346e59dcc9f720d9 SHA-1: 2e138c63d67bc9644fc56ae27033e7611343201e SHA-256: a85d683fc69066378a42a45b211d0ffb519f287157658cae058d228ff98a0d5b
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is used to deliver a secondary PDF payload which contains a direct link to a suspicious URL. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the primary malicious functionality resides within the OLE object 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 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
58c07f412c01c2125519a4a1cc000664b3712f2fc89ba2edc91d188200558c0e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD003904B4/OLE10nAtivE 1617 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
20e88f72779c36109b321993cb60b9b21ca15a00a620492af2f38dbcf292aa91		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1731072 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
af36a3c75fa4013809389d5deef6f8e80787dfff60b64de96fe9dec739efed16		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1709568 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
680e10cab55ea8e588d634804f122afdc911749de0ad4bfd4bc39d4a868acd2b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1566720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
d5fe4836a9ed6a2ea7d6b5fc0b034d0d6ab903c807fd5ee08b71750978986793		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1478656 bytes

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