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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 17d69889eec90509…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

132.0 KB First seen: 2022-04-21
MD5: 7bafa11025c9837b82b95a2abae23c7d SHA-1: c0f5c3ee0342aac6948602496d6e5247aa8a1aab SHA-256: 17d69889eec90509fa646409f6bf4c88b8d81826e9c67b9e8ae065f6c9bd9f50
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is a password-encrypted Office document containing OLE objects, specifically identified as an exploit carrier for Equation Editor. The presence of the CVE-2018-0798 anomaly strongly suggests exploitation of a vulnerability within the Equation Editor component to achieve arbitrary code execution. Given the nature of Office documents, the likely initial access vector is spearphishing attachment.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • 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.