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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cdc3533116963e84…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

2.48 MB
MD5: f324cd29dc6e81a4f46bb2278d32b16a SHA-1: 84ab49692f55e16e5bcd9af9d96205c26c7d5edc SHA-256: cdc3533116963e84b2dcba2eaaa97d227f89c98272be61053901dbbb93fe370b
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566 Phishing

The sample is an encrypted Office document containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate exploitation of CVE-2018-0798 via anomalous Equation Editor native stream data, suggesting it's designed to execute a payload. The document's encryption and the presence of exploit carrier shapes further support this. No specific family could be identified, and no direct IOCs like URLs or hashes were extracted from the static analysis.

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.
  • Equation Editor object carries payload-like Ole10Native stream high OLE_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE_PAYLOAD_ANOMALY
    Default-encrypted OOXML embedded OLE object declares the Equation Editor CLSID but stores a large high-entropy Ole10Native stream with malformed package sizing. This is exploit-shaped Equation/OLE payload evidence.
  • 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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