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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 04b4caff05d22778…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

71.6 KB First seen: 2022-06-20
MD5: aa367c81f112480144cf0989afb5154c SHA-1: 0211d125d58362ea115733560d1e8670a101bf2d SHA-256: 04b4caff05d22778ba80fa20b63c2cd8244857548e1e5c8b11db3890d60b07fe
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file is a password-encrypted Office document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and likely exploits CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Equation Editor that allows for arbitrary code execution. The document's encrypted nature and the presence of an exploit carrier shape further support this conclusion.

Heuristics 6

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    Default-encrypted OOXML embedded OLE object xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin contains the Equation Editor CLSID, the legacy component exploited by CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0802, and CVE-2018-0798.
  • CVE-2018-0798 — anomalous Equation Editor native stream high CVE likely CVE_2018_0798_EQUATION_NATIVE_ANOMALY
    Default-encrypted OOXML contains embedded Equation Editor data with anomalous native stream bytes consistent with a CVE-2018-0798-style exploit. This is treated as likely CVE evidence because the Equation object is malformed and payload-like.
  • Encrypted Office package with CFB FAT corruption critical OLE_ENCRYPTED_AND_MALFORMED
    Encrypted-package shape co-occurs with FAT-chain corruption — the documented combined evasion form.
  • Default-encrypted OOXML exploit carrier layout high OOXML_ENCRYPTED_EXPLOIT_CARRIER_SHAPE
    Default-password encrypted OOXML package contains embedded OLE object parts and additional activation/decoy parts. This layout is common in malicious Excel exploit delivery and requires inspecting the decrypted package.
  • Office document is password-encrypted medium OFFICE_ENCRYPTED_PACKAGE
    OLE container holds MS-OFFCRYPTO encrypted package (Standard Encryption (Office 2007, AES)).
  • Office OOXML encrypted with default VelvetSweatshop password medium OFFICE_DEFAULT_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED_OOXML
    OLE EncryptedPackage decrypts with Excel's built-in VelvetSweatshop password. Office opens this transparently, and malware uses it to hide OOXML exploit parts from scanners that only inspect the outer OLE container.