Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bbe3b00d48afec8f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

186.3 KB First seen: 2022-02-23
MD5: 55f02e537091252f0665a311828f54f5 SHA-1: 167317b38ef7da5170f40fac4156339965dce866 SHA-256: bbe3b00d48afec8fc7e35151feac211efece70e2381d3507557896b1e1afeca4
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is a password-encrypted XLSX file identified by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook. The encryption and the presence of an Equation Editor OLE object within the OOXML structure indicate it's designed to exploit vulnerabilities, likely to download and execute a secondary payload. The file's SHA256 hash is included as a primary IOC.

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.
  • 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.