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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 40cdc18bc95e92cd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

94.5 KB First seen: 2022-04-29
MD5: 9e0d71c3758e29b9d5b930219c5d208c SHA-1: ecff013b90578a278ea12a9eedf209712dc3fc63 SHA-256: 40cdc18bc95e92cd30af274b10e9a615db920d27e8dfdac30735159c0f2926b0
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking

The file is a password-encrypted Office document containing OLE objects, specifically an Equation Editor object. High-severity heuristics indicate this Equation Editor object is anomalous and exploits CVE-2018-0798. This suggests the document is designed to leverage this vulnerability to execute malicious code. No scripts were extracted, and the document body is encrypted, but the presence of the exploit carrier and the specific CVE points to a delivery mechanism for 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.
  • 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.

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