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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cd1d7aded53f0b45…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.66 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-01
MD5: 2acee60ed644e87b9c2f459c6c2576fe SHA-1: af34c59172bb27e87cae54bceeb38a9620fa6322 SHA-256: cd1d7aded53f0b459eb7b06313f9f519909f6471dbc074b2cc80d7392ebc4d39
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution T1059.005 Visual Basic

The Excel file contains an embedded Equation Editor object known to exploit CVE-2017-11882. This object triggers the loading of a malicious PDF. The PDF itself contains a direct payload link to 'https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com', indicating it is designed to download and execute a secondary stage. The VBA macros are present but appear to contain no executable statements, suggesting the primary malicious functionality resides within the embedded OLE object and the PDF.

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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

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
9f410ab695578f1ac9d81651ec34acab04a36efd91187daf491e8447e98f7438		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00149CEE/OLe10Native 1945 bytes
stream_003_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
5641a032dd9188e6c34ce6dcaa92d9313ea4901913b7fd8bd7539f2fa5197505		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1731584 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
307243b38526b9921475c3ac761a1a670e66d5054569877d633c483d5380758d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1710080 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
6bab43ef3534b083b696d62c20204c24c26d4bdfd0f81eeb80fc8e270713396a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1567232 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0003ec00.pdf
aa0b92239ef254e37cce81630a7c66916cee4a5def82a0c608281b050b1efda3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x3EC00 1479168 bytes

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