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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 abc3b86f0f8043fd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-13
MD5: 1d0ee0ee0df392541ccb92aa979d921d SHA-1: 8397db499f0afb99dd919594b91f6a31df671e35 SHA-256: abc3b86f0f8043fde81c0ba26b77040fd52d448229c2b82c38677a8e94a2028f
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is configured to deliver a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to an external URL. The VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain executable code, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is 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://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/

Extracted artifacts 7

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
c06dc43d7b07ce6bf669c5352f442ae844c2a48fd738adc4bd725e0b0edc5b99		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0009A59C/Ole10natIVE 1884 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075400.pdf
82007cc5e12637f80eaa5ac72031d4589e4a13c441aff19d55f28917884d41b1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75400 686592 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
d606007ab7593ef0f87c6f52e9d3fe33ddd57aa81e79c1bd85aefa3932dba2a9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1162240 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
46fb81a390d78e313f6138d6daa552c033bf7b2bc7dc89caec5d99c6d17569bd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1140736 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
5adfb1aed20e9c41a2292441cc1251299856ba974b7c727343ff04550d339378		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 997376 bytes

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