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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9fd8d01ce84dde49…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

2.32 MB
MD5: a7dee0e986468c526a69e0afabe61cca SHA-1: 9a4fcde1461506b9cbea0fde16186a7c12be893b SHA-256: 9fd8d01ce84dde493db6f64befad504224ff293c1a43f01eb94e9e76ef5ea45d
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an encrypted XLSX file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. This object exhibits anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798, indicating it's likely an exploit carrier. The default encryption further suggests a common delivery method for malicious Office documents. No specific family could be identified, and no direct IOCs like URLs or hashes were extracted from the file's content.

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.
  • 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 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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