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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c9d22a60a023743e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.54 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-27
MD5: 395e93a97fe3002b322412d758296c88 SHA-1: 0b356bf3d88424f01f3250af8e0d254a4cab90c0 SHA-256: c9d22a60a023743edc903a9c2f527671ee79ab3a3b3cb691ffa77f6583c1ed86
312 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 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 present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality is within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ESI) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP ESI)
  • 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
09871860646a104d9dfe191f014a2066e216a61c719329985cf860b8ef04910e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00234430/olE10nativE 1631 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
c8efa5332d780aacd9b1a693fc8990b0918c180f05378207b5d4a39911d39920		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1612800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
83b25e52601015a874ca08c0da28f29ac7486751159a804a6afda60548b9145a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1592320 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
45cdf8aa8a2fd0f761752f2e05dfa7d33a72beb3dbd157fbb6a7d5e1939f1e4b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1558528 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
6433544a0414e6f63724bc53bb61cc8a8a9f7f34c7b50588f3c7a96adae7bc2d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1470464 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.