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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d280867c2b2aa11c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-03
MD5: 1449bd5e337dd6a1b1e625221122994a SHA-1: 6f304bf76537615c0c0db31722d9825808156780 SHA-256: d280867c2b2aa11cc6b512aba4f1fc98542ee81b089d3cbabd1623db840c4bbd
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking T1187 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object is designed to deliver a secondary PDF payload, which in turn contains a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, suggesting they are not the primary execution vector.

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://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
659543dda352b5af39374ec0d5759fa6e9e663646fdd8057abfa45c7effc9415
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001DAE7E/oLe10NAtIvE 1395 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002c600.pdf
67329edb80651abad387790930842216a87ab20e88efa1a9e6e342d6a9a3c6d8
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2C600 1193984 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f
decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
f52c68bd217e07b378e220369c5c3504241fe8334f0ccf6cd536c030d246d236
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1371136 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
d29c7c6e45b61202c226359edd31c1f6c8de8127c5995550a00cbf44b587990b
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1349632 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004b000.pdf
8a3597b764232de21f543b4fc1ca3e675ed0f1d78daa131c8c596c3c3dc53ddd
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4B000 1068544 bytes