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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ab3465b12984b77d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.47 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-20
MD5: 4131c5a6291e985c4957e52711c9e20c SHA-1: 704a6e990964c92eab2af3686f13377aefd634ec SHA-256: ab3465b12984b77d904ffd661d6d7207852ea9b3d39fdce7693d0246ecbe2d6e
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

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 appear to contain no executable statements, suggesting the primary exploit vector is the Equation Editor vulnerability. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ECX) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ECX)
  • 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 9

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
0bedd32ea8c7bec8ef74cc8e5bea59e33d01f9a02d0a98c97ddecca9bc6aa980		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1812 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
fbdf8a1217f255da5141956ad04de20756e900c44f9aa34750e06c9ac81714a8		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000E4163/olE10NATIVe 1415 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00083c00.pdf
ee8e3e1ba5755b3cc1a06ec3efdcac7791fb4ab05e8920419b4ce4098aba4798		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x83C00 1004032 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off0002b17d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2B17D 12100 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off0002cf95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2CF95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
76da99c04a508b70a8348a4966e0810c7938656e4672b18e13b6ebb4f901e477		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1539072 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
e0ffaa99249b6749fb0f169c92cb6033073ea9171b7f55ef415ebf17811042b1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 1517056 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
40a2be06a550851af2c906b7d6e513dd943cb69e9d44a161a4f76706a75b29b5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1374720 bytes

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