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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 de7361b329ba196f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.35 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-23
MD5: 7bd10a7a519816b0da13b17aee3b3f92 SHA-1: 01028880aee6472ead71883f43520f56b08b4b0c SHA-256: de7361b329ba196f3293d0ea479ef7809affd39a980c518fad7a0a42127e57c0
312 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object, which is a known vector for exploiting CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload that includes a direct link to a URL, likely for further payload delivery. The VBA macros themselves do not contain executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality resides within the embedded OLE object and the subsequent PDF.

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 EBP) high SC_GETPC_CALL
    x86 GetPC stub (CALL $+5; POP EBP)
  • 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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 6

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
00f89226d35c0c2fc95dfe399dc56c3ffa0516d1826bf49e73492ceed0952b49		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00151862/oLE10NaTiVe 1274 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f200.pdf
075c6a0d707a2c58ddb8906703aaa3f19d8f5e185ba7476c2d73e295cf0c3795		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F200 1028608 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
94c1d387c6f492faed9b1233b1967390b12e03ea1554616c7b80731a7c7b201a		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1414144 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006400.pdf
d30a643c32d52837f6f900f55d5c3a43804dd7f95a6315ac987186434ba35854		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6400 1392640 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00019000.pdf
31c78448ee57905db80a41197ef5413f3f170bf85d94e956e9f9837e04e3c95f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x19000 1315840 bytes

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