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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c7bcfe5105235503…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.14 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-10
MD5: 3b4a9dced31eacd75206e9ed33c4136a SHA-1: a428f4c62620e323804c0465a131dd82f3c9d907 SHA-256: c7bcfe5105235503598fbf655e25d46d7895f0e1e2a603bab6b8f5f4091f6e0d
264 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The Excel file contains an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF file which has a direct link to a payload. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, indicating a deliberate attempt to conceal its malicious nature. The primary goal appears to be the execution of a second-stage payload delivered via the embedded PDF.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • 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 6

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ole10native_00.bin
266499d0219ab18a74427ae1062f8644e72e75d849b80770fb3ccc9ab964d0e4		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00002471/OLe10nATIVE 1686 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002b600.pdf
22de42d1594081da746fbc28645b7e927ec61f4dc42517c23663c3f75afc22c8		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2B600 1020928 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
927c5585773122c2ffbf9bb7d78dfca6978e64bfbcf7ab5944928827967e69cb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1194496 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
99b0bbcf7299db996a60d2d67b48e694e00b31b90b3630947f42326de2eb2af2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1172480 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004a200.pdf
69050913c858d1f7157cfc6f850816763864bde22bd7adcd1d14a09ec99f44ba		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4A200 894976 bytes

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