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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b2494aaabd68a29c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.55 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-12-07
MD5: 7897d067062d4d5d0824890c39a6ccda SHA-1: daa82905ae468f5087bbbf51b8b1425367d8b278 SHA-256: b2494aaabd68a29cbb11be4d3164f04657b24e5887345625704741da9515307a
148 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1059.005 PowerShell

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object, which is known to be exploited via CVE-2017-11882. The VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain executable code, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is within the Equation Editor payload. The file's structure and heuristics strongly indicate it's designed to exploit this specific vulnerability to execute a secondary payload.

Heuristics 4

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

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
1d3b71b8c6234aace88f31f6e674b07383e015a2e68993dcd4fc2526aa470fe5		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 2412 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
33703a71cfe549058654242b51c4eee7c23a812aa8ba21083333c012e0acbccd		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD013A5E79/oLE10NATIVE 1639 bytes

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