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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 aa052b84fcbfe9e7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

14.7 KB Created: 1996-10-14 23:33:28 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 15.0300
MD5: e912d3b77ac624cdaddb2a3263f3ec20 SHA-1: a111808dbcb1c9c3db8d524d954ef4fb3d56eec7 SHA-256: aa052b84fcbfe9e7415e604531feb8c81f3abfb6d722a32edf2b71130214a8ff
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an Office document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object, which is a known vector for exploitation, specifically related to CVE-2018-0798. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'ENABLE EDITING' to view the content, which is a common tactic to bypass macro security. While no scripts were extracted, the presence of the vulnerable OLE object and the enable editing lure strongly suggest an attempt to exploit the Equation Editor to download and execute a secondary payload.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin
8060999f4064986d094431253e52d453fcb15da632d07901d1f36ab126db9544		 ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 4096 bytes
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin
fafa2cbbe94832465360e2f21fc9b068daf57fdbb1b4bdf23b2346d35139dca0		 ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: Ole10Native 1543 bytes

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