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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ceeb7b4c98464f04…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.17 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-21
MD5: b9b21e99991c542b6c2298548c004f28 SHA-1: 09ab1bbc0baff1fee59e5409303297d9d2e80c47 SHA-256: ceeb7b4c98464f0429796c743d1c78e2d18c331c4e7c87448440726b7531e1d1
274 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object likely serves as a dropper for a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are minimal and do not appear to contain malicious code themselves, but the overall structure points to a multi-stage attack.

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.
  • 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.
  • External URI info PDF_URI
    PDF contains an external URL action
  • 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/
    • https://mobile.mail.yahoo.com/apps/affiliateRouter?brandUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fparg.co/UZzB&appName=YMailNorrin&partner=2&locale=1&pageId=&clickRef=contact_card&region=na&annotation=&buckets=

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
190d1d6cf99691904143dc3f74ada3474be607b95144be6cc86d1ce27121b9bb		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0031BECD/Ole10nAtIVE 1401 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
f4ba1b52495bcfcb9c92b09d9308b181ab6a9696fac1ab17ae5ddf2e6c3182b5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1218048 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
c8cd69668b54b51d4ec7ae0fdf6470d93dd0817104ad4844d61191a05ca47706		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 1197056 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e400.pdf
06d9a2be6bf871d623c97d02126113f1178230dc77db83ba6f11592339500069		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE400 1164288 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0001dc00.pdf
a0238578c774360db3d91121aedc62fe47b8a6097287eb94a9f8843636bdcb61		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1DC00 1100800 bytes

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