Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 789d9873aa8c6958…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

185.8 KB First seen: 2022-03-09
MD5: 6466672df1cc212c0df4ffd03168dba6 SHA-1: fc072675aac797bd1f33b0253c67dd1fbde8c2b7 SHA-256: 789d9873aa8c69588cc3cd9ec2b7e4f8db01ec340f02f370b0a56484e9f4a0cb
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking

This Office document is heavily encrypted and contains an Equation Editor OLE object, a known carrier for exploits. Heuristics indicate exploitation of CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Equation Editor. ClamAV detection confirms this is a Formbook downloader. The encrypted nature and exploit carrier strongly suggest the intent is 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.

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