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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7d7e33c7e57e155d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

184.0 KB First seen: 2022-05-11
MD5: aaac98c968fad65f254cf1462892222d SHA-1: 6bf6477346572023cc4dbecb898ba59d9c112a56 SHA-256: 7d7e33c7e57e155dd8a8f84d467104c69c9d7fb34d16059a33de603aa502c78e
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The sample is a password-encrypted Excel spreadsheet that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object exhibits anomalies consistent with the CVE-2018-0798 exploit, indicating it's designed to deliver a malicious payload. The document's encrypted nature and the presence of an exploit carrier shape further support this conclusion. No scripts were extracted, and the document body was not accessible due to encryption.

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-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.

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.