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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d4d9fb5de7b7d5ab…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-02
MD5: a8b983611985e1685dac5148a9320928 SHA-1: 3e70bb28bf278a59dd301e195e98303f8b0e73d1 SHA-256: d4d9fb5de7b7d5ab8384d275e66262934d8e855636f6d7f5d032785b98922c0f
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, has a direct link to an external resource. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques. No VBA macros were found to be executable, and the document body is minimal, suggesting the primary attack vector is the OLE exploit leading to 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://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
62163756065cd6a12022647ba2890c77d2bca5875fa9ed4e603212f5080627b2		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000EBA34/oLE10NAtIVe 1796 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00071800.pdf
416c400fb843d097fd9054408ec62c503b933d933fc54cbbc4af8eee667af07a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x71800 906240 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
175c83a31e20014ddcfbf3e817d62a22b7fa35e9115e12e6f4b284f39a19f523		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1367040 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
b6084e0739e5d1a6bdd22b0567131c6bc1629fc466eddfd80b9b272206e59c6c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1345024 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029200.pdf
4f4f3278c463611656349125dcdbfcf5b7851a5ec16229eb0978974850d431d7		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29200 1202688 bytes

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