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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2d3f2b959fa9ba12…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

2.02 MB
MD5: f2a07654eeb48420c41ff4e81f51f89c SHA-1: 2e721d622071e46c8434a34cb55decd49bd303f7 SHA-256: 2d3f2b959fa9ba12415c5be67192c47a5c1011d6188158d540fdb279c478e28d
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an encrypted Office document that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate that this object is anomalous and likely carries a payload, exploiting CVE-2018-0798. The encrypted nature of the document prevents further analysis of its direct content, but the presence of the exploit carrier strongly suggests it's designed for initial execution of a secondary payload.

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.
  • Equation Editor object carries payload-like Ole10Native stream high OLE_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE_PAYLOAD_ANOMALY
    Default-encrypted OOXML embedded OLE object declares the Equation Editor CLSID but stores a large high-entropy Ole10Native stream with malformed package sizing. This is exploit-shaped Equation/OLE payload evidence.
  • 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.