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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b00180028abba23f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.50 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-24
MD5: 2bf9954ea9ca8a88b7d4d74986fde17f SHA-1: 92ec15deb498f9998a11b7bed86770884e601afb SHA-256: b00180028abba23fa628dae16dfee7936238a934df39ed9f812ab5ec7123773e
332 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is used to deliver a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The ClamAV detection name 'Xls.Downloader' further supports its role as a downloader.

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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
  • 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 6

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
04ce9083f0ea74f028c9b6aab6c89b14c9d8ef74ce62f946f11f4266e3c8183d		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0015D5A3/ole10nativE 1474 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005c200.pdf
2c84951298a0932071829524904f194d8ff3875cb44bf7656128e95c4601fa2c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5C200 1198080 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
113327d7805d93378b17361f63b6e90f34ccb27c119b87ace361c0f02e193386		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1570816 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
7e15187041e37da4b0115e61c3b782ae0952a189f24f12e90d2f888c9b833196		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1549312 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00019000.pdf
933daaf32313cda0d018ef0dfad596d534605842f740337b28743ef7ac302830		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x19000 1473024 bytes

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