Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9fd9d8c7e1d18213…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

186.7 KB First seen: 2022-02-24
MD5: eb82c58ce606dfbdb9fdeca9cae65e03 SHA-1: e8b5300c294cd0f01a5ebc7a5184d661d513be49 SHA-256: 9fd9d8c7e1d18213283d679e98f24ad0475973ee2e0c013a894d087f4b3ae2e2
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file is identified as malicious by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook. It is an encrypted Office document containing an Equation Editor OLE object, which is a known exploit carrier for vulnerabilities like CVE-2018-0798. The presence of the Equation Editor OLE object and the ClamAV detection strongly suggest it's a downloader for the Formbook family, likely delivered via a phishing or social engineering lure.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • Encrypted Office package with CFB FAT corruption critical OLE_ENCRYPTED_AND_MALFORMED
    Encrypted-package shape co-occurs with FAT-chain corruption — the documented combined evasion form.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0
  • 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)).
  • 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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