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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e27d7f51f333c668…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.11 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-20
MD5: 8b4e0b87572717cfd3f2ae76df8bb81c SHA-1: 40ffb77814149ac091e855d05efa3ae0c1193158 SHA-256: e27d7f51f333c66888b58f1baf06c3055787212fd0ff90b2a52de6e221ee4a7c
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE 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 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
15cd020441e5dc88ab7aaa77f313aeda8e02e8358f67d749ceaf3da50a952263		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD003470C7/oLe10NATIVe 1825 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005ea00.pdf
96f5f4df4e32b599ccc479442cc89c3ed6839be8347623d3dbcf3c3fa73bfbd3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5EA00 781312 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
98f486adae505662ecd48a7de0eb380757a0da14510b77007ff2b161672f95df		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1164800 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
9cef63e662ffb4d3f4cc616772d4ea45208203c3d60ee00573fdaddaa7503e75		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1142784 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
0bc9702cee2ec3a8133e27e43fcbce72132285a04f3a04bbfa7199c4cad4d902		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 999424 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.