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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d8748d675e719b93…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-29
MD5: 985ed1bc3397c24669a1dae37ce09438 SHA-1: 5e1e04e3e3dfaf11ce72a7f3827ba47008788126 SHA-256: d8748d675e719b93f27cb865ffd5ca0fb7924c11d23ebf51ff45b36339fd1b89
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 is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which has suspicious static findings and a direct link to a payload. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself. The embedded PDF's direct payload link is the primary indicator of malicious intent.

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
b476419b55df163d093a65227174c10efad752dd8b8c901a2a0241b857f65d53		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00360DBE/OLe10nAtiVE 1511 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006c800.pdf
81bce17038f0951399f864c241c21072fa508aabccdeeaa9595b33e2776413a8		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6C800 847872 bytes
stream_004_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
e08296b2d4ced137b6b98efda4e6796a121925969acdf6292f2ee468e2c80de1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1288192 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
50345305fbc128dfe7bc89ea5c19ac146f279855ef024ce39b39275b925e4084		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1266176 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
af62e03a5b3c3e62a24fa061e8e06c0567bfca78014547d8b3724792f9f4f3fb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1122816 bytes

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