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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ad692d94f193669d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.15 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-05
MD5: 1f53c7bdfdea68bc4e25da78bf75360d SHA-1: f5039c4425b426ec98b7c3c5d91e1ea7e9085c7a SHA-256: ad692d94f193669dcd693b05b85ac79d10f97136a4c3b5bde41dcfef7bf9965f
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

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, in turn, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are benign, but the core functionality relies on the OLE object and the embedded PDF. The URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com is suspicious and likely part of the payload delivery chain.

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
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
fefb8ac0c1fd58ad21a404c831091134658c73d2a079aadac0ea663dad46e656		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000AEE3A/OLE10nAtive 1458 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006d000.pdf
946ec48c14d13d0213f92e93700815be1bf22c859f4e05d60e8ee48ce7d7394f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6D000 762368 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
ae94bf3c8cc144385d45b87369d621850a6e8a8e4eeb13975afa47296b0b0341		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1204224 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
88312bfaef3e5440b7ab2b6a5e882fb5b3e6f5bd5d20041362cc96e1f6e28d9c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1182720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
f7aa4e66a547913bc942b81fb6aaaf2ab276a9fec0a9f25cc5d262d1e962b2ed		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1039360 bytes

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