Malicious Office (OOXML) — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e6a23c041bb605c5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML)

14.8 KB Created: 1996-10-14 23:33:28 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 15.0300 First seen: 2020-09-07
MD5: 7e15914dff4b3378ad15968d2da41ab0 SHA-1: 608da239422e5ad413545319035209c135d617a7 SHA-256: e6a23c041bb605c568af9348bc6fccb8a223abc7e821bc6d8e9bac3901d5dea5
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is an Office document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically an Equation Editor object. Heuristics indicate this object exploits CVE-2018-0798 and contains suspicious shellcode. The document also contains a lure to enable editing and macros, a common tactic for macro-based malware droppers. The embedded OLE object is the primary indicator of malicious activity, likely serving as a dropper for a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 5

  • 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
  • Suspicious extracted artifact medium EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 4096 bytes
SHA-256: bff03750334b1e3cc5edda99a795459ea63022a26ee98f00d33341dfad9e7b6f
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis found candidate code region(s). Indicators: SC_GETPC_CALL
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: oLe10natIVE 1599 bytes
SHA-256: 651252b4e9e1b66b449a12777d4612a1c358608ea85fcbeaba8f70a564386fac
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis found candidate code region(s). Indicators: SC_GETPC_CALL