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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ac08f1d3518dfe35…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.15 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-16
MD5: 0765692957ce1a7d381daf4d254e0dc1 SHA-1: d32070796d799a70d20889773f54870b7a564ad7 SHA-256: ac08f1d3518dfe35c2d802992008d4a6750c6e83b9b7c4ed32be68c49bde40be
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is designed to deliver a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to a potentially malicious URL. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, 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 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
f472768597f0389fe250c60945805db88f476df3554783728984a8ae650b7b50		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00064643/OLE10naTive 1272 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
636dba746912e5650becabd47b507e0361cbc34c9b454d4acdc221bd49e48624		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1206784 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
44ba53cb57b06b2c30bb392e102e3405ffcc3cb2c9758894468ada1d0045796f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1185792 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
fff5a6128b69cc0cb232a914d3e90e5ca3eb0ed42bf4f0d5cbc2cc91dfa8b8d0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1152000 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
5b4730aab1dea5de2621a13567434a1e7b8c8dbabe8ed33f7e61749e8735e882		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1063936 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.