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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d85c85461a513f96…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-11
MD5: 6274d545005d6477820c1af0d1346aa5 SHA-1: e232d66e14882d050786ccf1cfb9a2a2379a5716 SHA-256: d85c85461a513f9684f261143d7eebd78c6cd4b380a5bd4b37acc724a2bfdefd
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The Excel file contains an embedded Equation Editor object, identified as a CVE-2017-11882 exploit. This object contains a secondary PDF payload that uses an external action to link to a URL, which is likely intended to download a second-stage payload. The VBA macros themselves do not contain executable statements, but the overall structure points to a multi-stage attack leveraging known vulnerabilities.

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.
  • x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDX) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDX)
  • 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 9

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
1781e49f86e4676eef3f1b88b8456d905579b5292803b8455d1155dff5b9188b		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000D9FC7/ole10naTIvE 1194 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00075000.pdf
5ad983b9e6b26f48a494b4174a7f935e690b23c051486bf82db9099ccb1220b4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x75000 815104 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off0002b17d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2B17D 12100 bytes
font_02_sfnt_off0002cf95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x2CF95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
8b994d73bac71df135f4119c62c016ea9bf964d92c6e36ac5dc6024487cc3a0f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1289728 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006800.pdf
80d91a224149c88b10e629c29693e43ae4aa689248aa431f45bea65e0de1d393		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6800 1267712 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029400.pdf
492c7b5ea34caa8ffdfeeb66dce3aa2bde74fa0a8466145cea2584035f478ea5		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29400 1125376 bytes

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