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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2d70213521f6f158…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

379.6 KB First seen: 2022-06-11
MD5: f58d5b5774bd0c760944607429487356 SHA-1: bdeb7d27a888d09cd756a5d6d98934910264d0a3 SHA-256: 2d70213521f6f15864d1d2a324197e71d01edd90c31e59407f73fcb4e10194ea
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious File T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The sample is an encrypted Office document that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object exhibits anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798, indicating it's likely an exploit carrier. The document's encryption and malformed structure further suggest malicious intent, aiming to leverage the Equation Editor vulnerability for initial execution.

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.