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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 deb1d37d200f1bf1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.23 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-29
MD5: 0fe5cda15c35728fb7b7c3a4dea1ad2f SHA-1: ecf3c0282c0b395ab56a5659a7bb47df19b6e4f1 SHA-256: deb1d37d200f1bf17b938480d1ef18202ecad85a166ef68aba9f984ea2494c5e
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary embedded PDF which, in turn, contains 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
13d377292bd888f86b79473377c19e40c3632a4592c6597078b29954b7ab0e9e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001FE3DE/oLE10naTIVe 1629 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006c800.pdf
eaeb3e044707f40bed3c30e6fd7e74389524e681dbf7c6d562c8958ae21b3d64		 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
f8cea93ef828e1300bc76ebe039b167dd3440ee2c6e1002a6a39671dde4a0edd		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1288192 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
00621e4f0708d9b14f5c8d3bf6d514e47078d2a67954054e29c8cafda790d4d1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1266176 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
79a4ac74ca304e296d4194f27d76944e56e999e251aae5223b5a003d5342856c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1122816 bytes

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