Formbook — Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 eb963c26385b029d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

180.3 KB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000 First seen: 2022-03-15
MD5: b78aa9dc160adf21f503e42a6162fe27 SHA-1: a77931464b4a708b8fc23dd7fd8d8e26484c178f SHA-256: eb963c26385b029d2827d60637dea230562f37382bb44fcc3dae6924da5bf182
168 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Formbook · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File

The critical ClamAV detection and high-severity heuristics for Equation Editor OLE objects (CVE-2018-0798) strongly indicate exploitation of a vulnerability within the Equation Editor component. This is a common delivery mechanism for malware like Formbook, which often functions as a downloader. The embedded OLE object likely contains the exploit code and the initial stage of the 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Formbook-bc97c1e0c33c3c93-9951465-0
  • Embedded OLE object medium OOXML_OLE_OBJECT
    Document contains an embedded OLE object
  • Hidden worksheet (hidden) low OOXML_HIDDEN_SHEET
    Excel workbook contains 1 hidden sheet(s) — hidden sheets are commonly used to conceal macro code, staging data, or intermediate payload construction

Extracted artifacts 3

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
ooxml_oleobject_00.bin
0f700179a9bc0640bc4d6622db3bcf5f79b8ef1fc4a3152b56531f2bcc96e3f2
ooxml-ole-object OOXML embedded OLE part: xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin 4096 bytes
ooxml_oleobject_00_ole10native_00.bin
d412e8a3b717c5d7a55aac170bcd5922c844f9f6c180a6612208cbb058dba68f
ole-package OOXML xl/embeddings/oleObject1.bin Ole10Native stream: OLe10NAtIvE 1801 bytes
emf_00.emf
bc1a75f99b79c98350da4bb5561eac01186dacf8d64f3ae8d4822e1a028644d9
ooxml-emf OOXML EMF part: xl/media/image7.emf 1099960 bytes