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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ae8a50012b35785d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

588.0 KB
MD5: 2ec428d0255d28fb71380854b3d61a96 SHA-1: 6bf2087f8b954806809b8a7ad51f4637a25ff7a7 SHA-256: ae8a50012b35785d8013d2d17aae7f7bd985a9f126ba935455a7e2f0a83163a8
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a password-encrypted XLSX file that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and specifically flags CVE-2018-0798, suggesting exploitation of a vulnerability within the Equation Editor to achieve code execution. The file is also flagged as an exploit carrier, further supporting this attack vector. No specific malware family could be identified, and no further IOCs were extracted.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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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