Malicious Office (OOXML) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 97e47d2b35b2a5bd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML)

500.1 KB Created: 2020-08-17 09:05:28 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 16.0300 First seen: 2020-09-07
MD5: d9a4a7d11330df6a78a79681297a7308 SHA-1: 90c5fae7dca1090b59911c245669ba6a7486afc5 SHA-256: 97e47d2b35b2a5bd6981ea85c0800b17d7a4382820fa6ec85b2be67a85f3a920
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an Excel document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically an Equation Editor object. Heuristics indicate this object exploits CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in the Equation Editor. This exploit likely leads to the execution of a secondary payload, as suggested by the high entropy and shellcode candidate findings in the extracted OLE streams. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature as a dropper.

Heuristics 6

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    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
    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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Dropper.Generic-9823786-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Dropper.Generic-9823786-0
  • 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 medium 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 ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 416768 bytes
SHA-256: b93f77cc2845ce15043ca021f64cc48770bcfe9bbcf2a30732ecf111e6970549
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis found candidate code region(s). Indicators: SC_GETPC_CALL Carved artifact entropy is 8.00, consistent with packed or encrypted content.
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: OLe10nATIVE 411092 bytes
SHA-256: e61eb363425d437ae2a8559ed62a7d976b1d7ebb6481f636a887910fe6ac17b1
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis found candidate code region(s). Indicators: SC_GETPC_CALL Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.