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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 eff8d85fc22accf7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.31 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-03
MD5: d981738093e4b59c4eb8e057be4aa409 SHA-1: 707eb438f82c77d0830580dc0dbf50b874d56d01 SHA-256: eff8d85fc22accf7720d5180adefde9214a5d84ee6cd6e8118e42124f46afb33
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking T1204 User Execution

The sample is an Excel file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object, in turn, contains a secondary PDF payload. The PDF has suspicious static findings and a direct link to a payload URL. No VBA macros were found to be executable, but the primary attack vector is the exploit chain leading to the 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://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
7b40c7ff700ed0e3dc0431680b9ec769e203ec9ad707b06a00d1fbc6d480fcd0		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0019DE49/OLE10naTivE 1687 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0002c600.pdf
bbbda625d26f8d8b516f6a4c96cad4cffc6d4a65e1d776b31094126906c2e0b9		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x2C600 1194496 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
d3701fbc2016f88981b66d6d10c10296a0479131acdfe5a387b83af23c5517b7		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1371648 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
b38edcd7f493bcdc693e0d90e6efacd2be05a18ced6fa3fb42d356535af627e3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1350144 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0004b000.pdf
dbcf8ae48f5b6616daa55559141d46488f09667b29a8d645b6a40ffbd422fb76		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x4B000 1069056 bytes

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