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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b5e54d06d532bd76…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.43 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-28
MD5: 38dd18258300f895788ed0d7a8e3e867 SHA-1: 99d5df5196aeb42ebca1d46e4773d8d93e268b8c SHA-256: b5e54d06d532bd76e74490f3e913f228c3ba105aa3865453602e9d465fc5824e
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to a URL. The PDF also exhibits parser-evasion techniques and external actions, suggesting it is designed to download and execute further malicious content. The VBA project itself does not contain executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality is within the embedded objects.

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
23abf400968e302ef9e46975995c41097a020d1f73c920d7bc4b65e4a1870026		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00230829/oLe10NATIVe 1509 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off00007f7d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7F7D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009d95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9D95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
c851ba5e5a5708e6c9640fb3aa25d20acd6792a94a17fa21161dba16f13e8044		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1490432 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
81721c5227c35673dd864e71dd9af4e57fda600e139e55ed821728cbd77cfc25		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1469952 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
5c4f2f81f79ba9f2901bddf670adb0d52afeb6c744b151d08b60b765dd69d609		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1436160 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
234cb04890a67e980e14b83c506f5295c3dec8de6d6f6f94973db20fdf2ee1bc		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1348096 bytes

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