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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7aee24d60a93b6b1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

588.2 KB
MD5: 34dc5697991e3d71062c029d14e4ed13 SHA-1: ceae6ecf4811f1c23cfafef919f1e7ef2ab918f5 SHA-256: 7aee24d60a93b6b1a4dea9aeb01a5a5bf10bf498bcab104aa8db1bd575840139
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an encrypted XLSX file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is malformed and exhibits anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798, a known vulnerability in Equation Editor. This suggests the file is designed to exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code, likely to download and run a secondary payload.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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.