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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e480211236e91046…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

9.9 KB Created: 2021-03-25 05:02:41 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000 First seen: 2022-06-01
MD5: 91b4eaa33deafc12f383795f15344fc5 SHA-1: a04127fcbca7fb62959307f6f29af88f593237f7 SHA-256: e480211236e910468da1e127180e710053732728f95a29995582704786b81985
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking: Component Object Model Hijacking

The sample is an Office document with a high-confidence detection for an embedded Equation Editor OLE object, specifically triggering CVE-2018-0798. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'ENABLE EDITING' to view content, which is a common tactic to bypass macro security. This suggests the embedded object is intended to be executed upon enabling content, likely exploiting the identified CVE to deliver a malicious payload.

Heuristics 4

  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    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
    Embedded Equation Editor OLE data contains anomalous native stream bytes consistent with a CVE-2018-0798-style Equation Editor exploit. This is treated as likely CVE evidence because the Equation object is malformed and payload-like, but it does not match the exact public matrix-overflow byte signature.
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin
4662b1fd9072ce844e889c87976bbea6dc22888bdf78cd20003303f1c1e51d73		 ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 3584 bytes
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin
3202fd0d52ccdb5092f5827a6b482bd47718c824a6e23bd1ccbc1f00989aaf31		 ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: ole10naTiVE 1505 bytes

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