Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 44b4e35c83535315…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

186.0 KB First seen: 2022-02-24
MD5: 86ae9fb7f6a5e36cf507619882594a59 SHA-1: 51cf63a673f71b88a350359a3de08224b7cbac52 SHA-256: 44b4e35c8353531544436c46eb064cf3acfce04f6f1d4691ac5d518e67e8e6ef
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an encrypted Office document containing an Equation Editor OLE object, which is a known exploit carrier for CVE-2018-0798. ClamAV identifies the sample as Doc.Downloader.Formbook, indicating it likely functions as a downloader. The presence of the Equation Editor exploit and the Formbook family attribution strongly suggest the document is designed to exploit this vulnerability to download and execute a secondary payload.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0
  • 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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