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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c1703f7b157f0c64…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.13 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-24
MD5: d9ad6cd29f0b97f7564ae97791f8eb96 SHA-1: a418e0c2be7954d9d1821208c43027208e8c99aa SHA-256: c1703f7b157f0c64df9ab31dc0757154c342f16dfa9f52815458b686df240f2a
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Link

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, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques and a direct payload link.

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 9

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
c3d696e6a63d7fa451e3e0d4aa7128757699eb2450674b12752baf302ce21869		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0002B714/olE10nAtive 1513 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075000.pdf
d27a242420036612bcb6f3e26fd6b69336e4d023ea2d468224aa159964a621be		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75000 700928 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off0002b17d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2B17D 12100 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off0002cf95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2CF95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
6a34c524dac4bf9fcd73cd8883720bd62609cccf0450c902a96fdd786c971a92		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1175552 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
1102f0c86aa16eb7fa52e0f1191719b09e96a9546af6c8751cb4e1c2f1c05374		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 1153536 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
0d875a98532da866a9fe767f9d3ddc5081df0680faeb9229811cb1faf311bdaa		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1011200 bytes

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