Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7a9925480e879e79…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

186.8 KB First seen: 2022-02-23
MD5: 36dbecd61527e45c5a536a61f2ec0e44 SHA-1: aba41d5e9c4d81db8ed46780fd1d7fef7c6036e2 SHA-256: 7a9925480e879e79bbf7babe40202f4a3de087bc7d4a044f4be44d910a63a890
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file is an encrypted Office document, identified by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook. It contains an Equation Editor OLE object that is anomalous and indicative of CVE-2018-0798. This suggests the document is designed to exploit this vulnerability to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of an embedded OLE object within an encrypted OOXML file points to its use as an exploit carrier.

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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