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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f1b53c0f47f53979…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.24 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-09-12
MD5: 302da82854f72c71b92a5d8596530d1a SHA-1: c84bd126aa54d1cffbc56cdfd1509efca912a15d SHA-256: f1b53c0f47f53979a2ba1c38db789242fc659cfa4fcaf2417793bed3e645c5bd
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

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, in turn, has a direct link to an executable or archive. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary exploit mechanism is the OLE object.

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
03cf077cf8a91d3c796e765dad8dabb1dcc4ce70b070cdc3f65b360d1846c32e		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD00329C38/oLe10nATivE 1840 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0005f600.pdf
56592b1375aff515ee4e5af9401357d6df78dda4fe3ee27d7cbb8a79804bc45c		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x5F600 905728 bytes
stream_003_off00005f60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5F60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
8e4562bb555136c085a0180a5270c03b87f10da520c9bac1029872cedb607962		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1292288 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
437bc54ba9dd688183345af14b9a3ac2ef2cd934fdf4de4398cddfe91523e56b		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1270272 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
b9689646b30cce5e06b0f11f1b3e1fdc196eee808b065f3ced5728761980c707		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1126912 bytes

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