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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c4c46ca0ffaea815…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

52.5 KB First seen: 2022-06-17
MD5: 7c2e0e8f5dc18e209d717ade5e40e2e9 SHA-1: 361498488bfb8d0247da502ecb282051f4026438 SHA-256: c4c46ca0ffaea815056a29f09db324325e67a8e17bf0836b6e566796cca20822
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an encrypted Office XLSX file. Static analysis identified it as an exploit carrier, specifically leveraging an Equation Editor OLE object. The presence of the 'CVE_2018_0798_EQUATION_NATIVE_ANOMALY' heuristic strongly suggests exploitation of CVE-2018-0798. The document is password-encrypted, preventing direct analysis of its content, but the identified exploit vector points to a malicious intent to compromise the user's system.

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.

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