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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fa2fc48f4d1662b5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.15 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-10-05
MD5: 93d7401a45b5695eebacb757a4bc68f2 SHA-1: 050e7f299b7e2327be0b3a2d6c09a1fe319763cd SHA-256: fa2fc48f4d1662b5e5173965a80eed264d66ed5c22ce8ce56c536082073908ef
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 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 empty, indicating the exploit is solely reliant on the OLE object and the embedded PDF. The URL 'https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com' is suspicious and likely part of the payload delivery chain.

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
1bca7a3efd531f178d2b3b980c6bac6e658bcb82f041a0cc9460248da24e96cc		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD0006A354/OlE10nAtIVE 1598 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0006d000.pdf
1798c8e22fac0962ab2fcaf03d5ff31f8e496efb8d9a7b4090891e8f3ae19bdb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6D000 762368 bytes
stream_004_off00005d60.bin
2998a126f4fa11ceb265371a5f7968ec18bc4692a32631a544232dc74040021f		 decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x5D60 252488 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001200.pdf
f3a78401c0337cf307a0513eb95c95bf7b2b2b9d8d318b5c64fd33298d53944f		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1200 1204224 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006600.pdf
c3d726615105db0cf140ab80c3be072522cffcbcf59e84cf456c53906863de27		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6600 1182720 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00029600.pdf
4c106b0902ab8b1e0020864cce9903de6a772db0a249d9dd4b5dd43dda9171eb		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x29600 1039360 bytes

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