Formbook — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 dedfa0f74f9f15ef…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

186.2 KB First seen: 2022-02-24
MD5: 5d88ca9d8ab891bd206fe0348deaac51 SHA-1: 3c9c0cd4fab66bf1481ebecd2698c90353722679 SHA-256: dedfa0f74f9f15efa510015553bc7c9a7f1c023d46725ac2960a74d08a7dadd9
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an encrypted Office XLSX file. High-severity heuristics indicate it contains an Equation Editor OLE object (OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR) that exploits CVE-2018-0798 (CVE_2018_0798_EQUATION_NATIVE_ANOMALY). This object is embedded within an exploit carrier shape (OOXML_ENCRYPTED_EXPLOIT_CARRIER_SHAPE). The file is also detected by ClamAV as Doc.Downloader.Formbook, strongly suggesting it acts as a downloader for the Formbook malware family. The encryption and malformed structure (OLE_ENCRYPTED_AND_MALFORMED) are consistent with exploit delivery mechanisms.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • 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.