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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6a5f7110b50de0f8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

593.0 KB
MD5: c02ba91105fee870115536efe9712ff0 SHA-1: da279b3ee3e4dce79e50ef2bfa6c0c9b3ed79c68 SHA-256: 6a5f7110b50de0f86b58913bf9de60cad623bbc16b7ae4208ab0d583f6066322
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an encrypted Office document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and exploits CVE-2018-0798, a known vulnerability in Equation Editor that allows for arbitrary code execution. This technique is commonly used to deliver secondary payloads, hence the high confidence in an exploitation attempt.

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-128)).
  • 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.