Malicious Office (OOXML) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 19ea39874fb28d01…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML)

563.4 KB Created: 2019-11-27 09:20:57 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000 First seen: 2020-06-01
MD5: e5e748e3e4a29d2c4b5b75fa6d00662d SHA-1: aff878612546a793a8a98901fc3d39896d6c790e SHA-256: 19ea39874fb28d0178fe82841dcc96e58da5b95be34398f99ca0c9b610bec348
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an Office document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically identified as an Equation Editor object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and carries a payload-like stream, strongly suggesting exploitation of CVE-2018-0798 or a similar vulnerability in the Equation Editor to achieve code execution. The document body content appears to be a list of parts or inventory items, likely a lure to disguise the malicious embedded object.

Heuristics 5

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    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
    Embedded Equation Editor OLE data contains anomalous native stream bytes consistent with a CVE-2018-0798-style Equation Editor exploit. This is treated as likely CVE evidence because the Equation object is malformed and payload-like, but it does not match the exact public matrix-overflow byte signature.
  • Equation Editor object carries payload-like Ole10Native stream high OLE_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE_PAYLOAD_ANOMALY
    Embedded OLE object declares the Equation Editor CLSID but stores a large high-entropy Ole10Native stream with malformed package sizing. This is an exploit-shaped Equation/OLE payload container seen in malicious OOXML samples. It is not assigned to a specific CVE unless the MTEF/Equation Native primitive also matches.
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 571904 bytes
SHA-256: ecf15433527e4295ce5d9590a0ce9538d9490ad58c21511b2e07ee174ac70e2e
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 8.00, consistent with packed or encrypted content.
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: ole10naTIVe 565238 bytes
SHA-256: f3aef347f1b89e60f7bc4cd0e24c6429545d21fc75393507bc6915435edeca1f
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.