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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5dc5b1d933616f4e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

14.8 KB Created: 1996-10-14 23:33:28 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 15.0300
MD5: ebdc1ccdb1c4388751f80059ca317fd5 SHA-1: 627b8728cbf26750bf54d727fcffbbedb55b8d9b SHA-256: 5dc5b1d933616f4e4b4f756b372ec3879855dc0fe9e22b13f97571ce1ac69841
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file is an Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded OLE object, specifically an Equation Editor object. Heuristics indicate this object exploits CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'ENABLE EDITING' to view the content, which is a common tactic to bypass macro security and execute embedded malicious content. The embedded OLE object is the primary indicator of malicious activity.

Heuristics 4

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    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
    Embedded Equation Editor OLE data contains anomalous native stream bytes consistent with a CVE-2018-0798-style Equation Editor exploit. This is treated as likely CVE evidence because the Equation object is malformed and payload-like, but it does not match the exact public matrix-overflow byte signature.
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin
9ec80ef3af90fdf32ac9795f5d3bbe65f6ce59e033b1e6b501137ec381fa34f7		 ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 4096 bytes
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin
d244ca73533830b7f3270c361ca76459739b99c6c29ab35ce5e5187d0f07fc66		 ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: OlE10nATiVE 1692 bytes

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