Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 58a67b3da6d71fb5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

206.6 KB First seen: 2022-05-09
MD5: fd6ec9bacc4bec3cb792127abcc89959 SHA-1: f5fe4a3f904ade49ace942e185d3c7eeed4c125f SHA-256: 58a67b3da6d71fb50de8c2351f28c1b8a33d72ed6fd32f76422b10ead2b36bc2
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file is a password-encrypted Office document, identified by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook. It contains an Equation Editor OLE object that exhibits anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798, indicating it's designed to exploit this vulnerability. The presence of the Equation Editor OLE object within an encrypted OOXML file strongly suggests it's an exploit carrier intended to download and execute a second-stage 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.