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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cbfb59765d0735c6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.29 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-02
MD5: cd1ea2c3466502c1b837f580c89435c6 SHA-1: c700d71d0b983afd4f604468216abdb164292356 SHA-256: cbfb59765d0735c67e0907dc56dc8d7de3c136bfca580fe0ad309d840f7f6a21
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file contains 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 an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but do not contain executable statements, suggesting they are not the primary execution vector. The embedded PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques.

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 EBP) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EBP)
  • 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 7

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
eed3929320afe36351d1fe5effdddb21e139e0e077c059ec8a48fd022788a60e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00136C37/OLe10nAtivE 1785 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006f800.pdf
253f9374e631a8368f032e16de4edc453e86b533b5672f1b8a331e723b655e6c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6F800 892928 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
4adc4e63018798bcca4a1ddaef3de0a3783b3465b9e74111e7d8d908a3f8da4d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1345536 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
659a9495692507eb1b9de915178d6c8829929d80fc1c2f3502a9cf7165a529be		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1323520 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
c548d06fbdf79821874e090bd083b96d1044171b1bedf6ea0b4c63b93a44eccc		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1180160 bytes

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