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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 20163a5eb0b8c8bc…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

327.5 KB
MD5: 86e0d3f2f6c8d3e8cf4da4e316f8960a SHA-1: ce24becfb84a908059c0403ba3ba940dda9c0db4 SHA-256: 20163a5eb0b8c8bc8853d5b1a4516f12e94a14737f59e112ee51d6d6e37b9466
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an OOXML document that is password-encrypted and contains an embedded OLE object, specifically identified as an Equation Editor object. High-severity heuristics indicate this object is an exploit carrier for CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor. This suggests the document is designed to exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code.

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-128)).
  • 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.