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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e708bc49e3be1836…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.16 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-19
MD5: b125a6ec2422678115c10319db95e8a9 SHA-1: 0290a4ffb50f159a368c2039e64ea6672a3b441f SHA-256: e708bc49e3be183622e9741f408794c4ef83761d3d9f243dcef214e6ece37aba
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 object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, when opened, links to an external URL. The VBA macros are benign and do not appear to contain executable code. The primary malicious functionality is driven by the embedded OLE object and the subsequent PDF.

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://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 8

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
3374c4e0a1b33badd901adba052eca5721efad734f740f95958cbc9e75589e0e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00150668/OlE10native 1576 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
185d0656bcab29c636ffd6605bee45f3ace3006f495e03e98131e731dda3a70d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1207808 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
cecde4cf86288f4151ae20d4218159a24387d437672127a6936a118df7f366ec		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1186816 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
42268eb763743b1c21b630c0282313e18e69822cbc9b848de8a8772e0379ecc0		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1153024 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
295077b127203239a89fd89375fdb546c3661e40b9f82b555fc0b013e67d4cd1		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1064960 bytes

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