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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9fa9e168476db37e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

100.5 KB First seen: 2022-09-13
MD5: c07ef14d6d7a8a81f5700053e3c87279 SHA-1: 4def3b4a5e99349f98d60bcd54e41200410f9fee SHA-256: 9fa9e168476db37e970b1c0a3c9c5622b287767950f1f2f11293850a3ecaf0b7
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious File T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking

The file is an encrypted Office XLSX document. Static analysis identified an Equation Editor OLE object within the file, specifically triggering the CVE-2018-0798 heuristic. This indicates the document is designed to exploit a vulnerability in the Equation Editor component to execute arbitrary code, likely to download and run a secondary payload.

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.

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