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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d73fd6d4d865b029…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-19
MD5: 3306a587437f5c891b15c30905e47131 SHA-1: ffe5ff9432c0034a5d86823328fd58fe36d06b67 SHA-256: d73fd6d4d865b0297cc5decbc09dac9461b8aecaeff1af02dada51d2b5ae2005
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

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 a suspicious URL. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating 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
e4227ff0e0691400a0dca083c6d75e8c4cec7b1aaf9ab04577d5122831df1cba
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0003E054/olE10NaTIVE 1738 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
5271f2723779bdc9f0725916edde71f9fdda9feb5612278325f5e61d4a7d61f8
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 781312 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f
decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
ec2af6d1adbf663620571baace023e75f46a963bea621d13ce60902c71994468
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
48ee9ed70282be7a70fc6db4c9c44925ab0bfef6a61f92bf26bf10711bd4fe8e
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142784 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
5506c1e53aeb5cb724bcc0c33377087e349ff9ee4a540983d6ed74d3dc038455
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 999424 bytes