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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 45e5967e8f8153aa…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

344.0 KB First seen: 2022-04-14
MD5: d4f1ab18c1f6bb0077cdea113b98ae5f SHA-1: b36dd13e4c9000c31db28991da8664692f32e643 SHA-256: 45e5967e8f8153aaa2c7ead299d6a6534e3b3cfa2e9eb183557790a26d1c4b01
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking

The sample is a password-encrypted XLSX file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. High-severity heuristics indicate that this object is anomalous and exploits CVE-2018-0798. This suggests the file is designed to leverage the Equation Editor vulnerability for initial execution, likely to download and run a second-stage 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.