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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7848efb6f8588515…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

2.18 MB
MD5: 266d4018c5bc1fab8efd02c470c8b0ad SHA-1: 9253051bd276aea8c196ae0bc4737ecee15af744 SHA-256: 7848efb6f8588515f2ce88036782d891bf88604fc4b98f946aae276c1e3479a4
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is a password-encrypted Office document containing OLE objects, specifically identified as an Equation Editor exploit carrier. This strongly suggests it leverages a vulnerability in the Equation Editor component to achieve arbitrary code execution upon opening.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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.