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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 de5fa33b72960f87…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-29
MD5: ddd3c163898577c0f93cc24ca96f3182 SHA-1: 40065ec804f88c320ad0ef66a41efc605962d6a3 SHA-256: de5fa33b72960f87f02fd32ff9c0069060e4d022d95158004ca2ebc33033d472
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to an external URL. The PDF also exhibits parser evasion techniques, suggesting an attempt to conceal its malicious nature. No VBA macros were found to be executable.

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 EDI) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EDI)
  • 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
27b1a94c894ea897ff57e30483a2a2aaa9a21bab7446c8a167b968e80fb3e8e1		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00201456/ole10nATIVE 1355 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006c800.pdf
44a02e97745343d9f32d593a892a2e24b00c493aa7c93c3bdda7a329d6c7e2dd		 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
e627803b09ee0c2ea4679138ff89702fbc689ada92a32e4f391bacb783069ef1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1288192 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
68c8f81bc8250759e16f527c0515a66ba497303d18fcafc5a290ae7ad963a0c3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1266176 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
b314230d31e632419eb60819fe40b523bbe4f7815e77ef10cee91554e41cb371		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1122816 bytes

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