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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 37e0ad28ce2812fc…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

327.5 KB
MD5: ac548ddb2c6046a30ee986498ea52c44 SHA-1: 406d65eba79b3cd24d14bff3ed2fa11aa4a61053 SHA-256: 37e0ad28ce2812fc6aadb3c8b9ef8e95a843ddd4fa5fe2d501d2b2f0e566e4a0
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is a password-encrypted OOXML document that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and likely exploits CVE-2018-0798. This vulnerability allows for arbitrary code execution, typically used to download and execute a second-stage payload. No scripts were extracted from this sample, but the presence of the exploit carrier suggests a high likelihood of payload delivery.

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.