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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 970aec442d2f980f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

1.21 MB
MD5: a50132e486f63219611ad880610a24aa SHA-1: e22ba948d161a6cccd1ee1596061a20753217a0f SHA-256: 970aec442d2f980fc04857d75e5b239f83a14634dcbed1fa66f0d4e664a9a16d
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a password-encrypted Excel file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object exhibits anomalies indicative of an exploit carrier, specifically an impossible Ole10Native header within the Equation object, suggesting it's designed to drop and execute a secondary payload. The presence of the Equation Editor OLE object strongly points to the exploitation of a known vulnerability within that component.

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.
  • 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.
  • Equation Editor object carries payload-like Ole10Native stream high OLE_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE_PAYLOAD_ANOMALY
    Default-encrypted OOXML embedded OLE object declares the Equation Editor CLSID but stores a large high-entropy Ole10Native stream with malformed package sizing. This is exploit-shaped Equation/OLE payload evidence.
  • 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.

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