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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2ab71e8234885864…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

582.5 KB
MD5: f128a5fb23df7562f5bd90feff79e698 SHA-1: 0b3ad59cbc8fa0ab17c984b90c547218224e7cac SHA-256: 2ab71e823488586472ccdaca26be1f10abbc7ef35e15bcdaf0c3bb8930e57806
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an encrypted OOXML file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate exploitation of CVE-2018-0798 via an anomalous Equation Editor native stream, suggesting it's designed to execute arbitrary code. Since the document body is encrypted and no scripts were extracted, the exact payload and delivery mechanism beyond the exploit carrier are unknown.

Heuristics 4

  • 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 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.