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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d58a1a9b94db664a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

80.5 KB First seen: 2022-06-22
MD5: c091c3348d801219e6a00aa9ee60748b SHA-1: 70ce6537913b818e0911f17c181a38a0c3bf88b6 SHA-256: d58a1a9b94db664a69348d11e9f5a41a4141bc8655ecc13afba59a66bdc202d0
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is an encrypted Office document that contains an Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and specifically flags CVE-2018-0798, suggesting exploitation of a vulnerability within the Equation Editor to achieve code execution. The document is encrypted with a default password, further indicating it's designed as an exploit carrier.

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.