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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c9e9710a55d5cea3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.64 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-04
MD5: 4977a0a8b8e0f3df6887b7d7ba7f68d0 SHA-1: 6c7550e83596b45eff457964a6106ab5cf273a48 SHA-256: c9e9710a55d5cea39b5946addd2180d6d6365a3071a66e2b9175b922c27a65c8
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor object, which is a known vector for exploiting CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload that includes a direct link to an external URL, indicating a downloader or exploit delivery mechanism. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality resides 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 EDX) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDX)
  • 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 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
e0785235db8c4f1d1ee170c7c30ae416a077b9649119f50bd20d40e76eafe770		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00311ACC/ole10NATive 1792 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off00092d7d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x92D7D 12100 bytes
font_03_sfnt_off00094b95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x94B95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
15eef1a5875142b819fb91a71f5e22ade5ee53b39575d05b138934705a406cc2		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1715200 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
fb2899dc6f6e4514235992b21b1f05a6e9eb78a4ada5bedacfa4ad531b8fc35e		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1693696 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
534175748eb3c0435792a71df15e2c3e2e56628262edb8e604e899494cdc25c7		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1550848 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
234be063b946c2b022993c7d24a598b85eec65b835c3dcb87efdd9fc5f1f53eb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1462784 bytes

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