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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b53b918bda731bfd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.24 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-07
MD5: be38afae7a44ad399898179daeb36d18 SHA-1: 7cb6cd233477d665c053881e52dded9688c1c369 SHA-256: b53b918bda731bfd0bbfe94245c94acdc950660685c064b94a0c1174761d5d74
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample contains 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 an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself.

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
3d80f11d00232122804686912f3baca0e5e5dbe5e995ca1b37a805289262fe54		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00009DF6/Ole10naTive 1591 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f600.pdf
d0f0b9d27390bebae450334d1eb4f857702e70f81589df322ad0f1970d1ac541		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F600 905216 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
a4966d5ea10e1699cb8bbb18b47f57d95631b2033ddbc9b5078e6eb1f6ff4809		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1291776 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
b0a584251aa8136fcf9971c53a494f91ba0c76f95bf3fee8a2983d8af118189f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1269760 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
611d72da27327f6caea3abfe15043ff5276506f5811ceadf69acd85a5ed96b80		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1126400 bytes

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