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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6e8bcec8e9bda6ce…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

76.0 KB First seen: 2022-05-09
MD5: 3503b5680076a02ff88400eab456c55e SHA-1: 323f774e67353fd9b683a9b06fd7b497c95b37af SHA-256: 6e8bcec8e9bda6ce2ffd235249938f9cfc7ea3c000e165374ae9f02ffdbae329
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 vulnerability in Equation Editor, to achieve code execution. The encrypted nature and the specific exploit carrier suggest it's designed to deliver a secondary 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.