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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 39d9fa5be1453ba2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

343.5 KB First seen: 2022-04-11
MD5: 19bfa6d4468faa8a1bc7e1f16acc618e SHA-1: 67c45139f3e56b0220d29ba0efcf706dbd4c1a29 SHA-256: 39d9fa5be1453ba2c609deaccd1f2dcef10e4b2810d7980415e2302f3462a855
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is a password-encrypted Office document that contains an Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is likely an exploit carrier for CVE-2018-0798, designed to execute arbitrary code upon opening. No VBA macros or scripts were extracted, but the presence of the Equation Editor exploit is sufficient to classify it as malicious.

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)).
  • 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.