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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7f055f033143c339…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

1.73 MB Created: 2021-09-22 12:07:42 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000 First seen: 2022-03-17
MD5: 2e809cef8e292370c3942f37bda91d30 SHA-1: db54fd2457d1c7d50b837bd3eed2e789cab2ce10 SHA-256: 7f055f033143c339064cc376894873f2e2c7554d97110ce4fc5f459d14efd0a9
142 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Office document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically an Equation Editor object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and carries a payload, strongly suggesting exploitation of CVE-2018-0798 or a similar vulnerability in the Equation Editor to achieve client execution. The presence of an embedded malicious object points to a spearphishing attachment delivery method.

Heuristics 5

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    Embedded OLE object xl/embeddings/3sFk.43S 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
    Embedded Equation Editor OLE data contains anomalous native stream bytes consistent with a CVE-2018-0798-style Equation Editor exploit. This is treated as likely CVE evidence because the Equation object is malformed and payload-like, but it does not match the exact public matrix-overflow byte signature.
  • Equation Editor object carries payload-like Ole10Native stream high OLE_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE_PAYLOAD_ANOMALY
    Embedded OLE object declares the Equation Editor CLSID but stores a large high-entropy Ole10Native stream with malformed package sizing. This is an exploit-shaped Equation/OLE payload container seen in malicious OOXML samples. It is not assigned to a specific CVE unless the MTEF/Equation Native primitive also matches.
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin
cd9d41a26691fe56bb7fcd412329e73f46c2987aefff1980afbdfd904948e4f0
ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/3sFk.43S 2102784 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.98, consistent with packed or encrypted content.
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin
b3eafec2acbc4736a17a017406fc11bb99a681cefbe4415bbafe056805eec011
ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/3sFk.43S Ole10Native stream: Ole10Native 2083492 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.