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

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f19023d80ac5637a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

83.5 KB First seen: 2022-08-09
MD5: 923541728eb8ea88eaa2446941397e10 SHA-1: 5d7101ed62cd480dddb2139cb4ec5694f43b1d91 SHA-256: f19023d80ac5637a3e75263f76df348e23d7d73af44fb64e17343a856c1b029d
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1559.001 Component Object Model and Distributed Component Object Model

The sample is a password-encrypted Excel spreadsheet containing an embedded Equation Editor OLE object. Heuristics indicate this object is anomalous and exploits CVE-2018-0798, a vulnerability in Equation Editor, likely to execute a second-stage payload. The document is encrypted, preventing direct analysis of its content.

Heuristics 5

  • 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 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.