Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b18c855b2e6d5971…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

187.2 KB
MD5: 3aabf03b6f3b8057ced55f51ff4e6ff8 SHA-1: 65cf577315459f951a134fe25204ede7ad41497a SHA-256: b18c855b2e6d597129d61480636995e4c448544f74b044a518cb13585630f344
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

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

The file is an encrypted Office document identified by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook. Heuristics indicate it contains an Equation Editor OLE object with anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798, a known exploit vector. The encryption and malformed structure suggest it's intended to bypass static analysis and deliver a malicious payload, likely related to the Formbook family.

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.