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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e450de6d54db9d91…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

196.5 KB
MD5: 0520ff276570826480fb4332cfe4e272 SHA-1: d96684e39eaff5f06075c0dceb1ee535cea6076d SHA-256: e450de6d54db9d914e8363c676ec9be95ee0dd8212dacfe859b28822a4c204fe
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an encrypted OOXML file identified as an exploit carrier. It contains an Equation Editor OLE object that exhibits anomalies consistent with CVE-2018-0798. This indicates the file is designed to exploit a vulnerability in the Equation Editor component for initial execution. No further stages or IOCs were extracted.

Heuristics 4

  • 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 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.