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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 aadb0dc2e4d6d475…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.54 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-26
MD5: ded3c40a4bdb15573c1cd00502996e97 SHA-1: 45999a760b2ef978991f76595efabe7b063c1891 SHA-256: aadb0dc2e4d6d475b6dbb2bb9065dbaa24a2d136951860340c066aa3391708b9
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious File T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious Attachment T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

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, when opened, uses a direct payload link to the URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is solely 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
7256ec8cc5cdb4bb301ddbdeb3402e71292423c07995a0b47b24fd7ecde62dd9		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00073902/OlE10NaTIVe 1652 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
049dfb11a43638754347bacd28ca7488ae820f0b880e382e6b1077b15968d619		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1612800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
102b18c61f13d929347a444694611f185aa53d9484e001c2c46598c8c94d46d4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1592320 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
2ffce4a268fec6f78d88c046953a28fa74f658183527e5026f4a1067356c6691		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1558528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
9a3a3addea8714ec420cc8599a3da227264c39f346cc517a7440efe19e3d1b45		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1470464 bytes

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