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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2202801c0f7dbc1e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

343.4 KB
MD5: d734df12c427c2a3e97e60b95fcc44a2 SHA-1: 35a43c43df1a45d391c0a776d8053892bd3834e9 SHA-256: 2202801c0f7dbc1eb86736e14e945e056dc6790019769e495058caf631bce17f
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an encrypted Office document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is designed to exploit CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor. The embedded object exhibits anomalous native stream properties, suggesting it's an exploit carrier. The document is also flagged for malformed structure and encryption, common traits of malicious Office files.

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.