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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b548a2274a3ecbef…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

94.0 KB First seen: 2022-04-29
MD5: cc4cd21bc0e5a0703ca8f28414a83ff2 SHA-1: 4ef9b9d3e66677f465c650010e6d5928cc5b83f3 SHA-256: b548a2274a3ecbeff9aa7062450e0b45ba597af177d40872f68bea7b55477e7b
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking

The file is a password-encrypted Office document that contains an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate that this object is anomalous and specifically triggers detection for CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Equation Editor. This suggests the file is designed to exploit this vulnerability for initial execution.

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.
  • 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.