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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b654445f37924d58…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

454.0 KB
MD5: 2b071a478ba1792ff6315f1516911226 SHA-1: f0d8461e199974f2c67079731df87d601768deaf SHA-256: b654445f37924d58e05a19e02b8ee39786a726a46d4d58d13c71e3a64a5ab872
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an encrypted OOXML file containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. High-severity heuristics indicate the presence of an exploit targeting CVE-2018-0798 within this object. This exploit likely facilitates the execution of a secondary payload, although no specific details about the payload or its delivery mechanism are available from the static analysis.

Heuristics 4

  • 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 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.