Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 02bdc6f9aab0fd9e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

60.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-10
MD5: a3971087e91135545afa4760f9c9263f SHA-1: 92992ebf7346e7e6c4a03f8abff1c7214970042f SHA-256: 02bdc6f9aab0fd9e1d21c3dbd840c792c48dc1d0f22ca3f9c93d67f1ff71245a
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open defined name, indicating an attempt to automatically execute code upon opening. The macros construct URLs by concatenating strings, such as 'https://weboculta.com/css/b3Lfoq37Gl4D/', which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The ClamAV detection explicitly identifies this as an Emotet downloader.

Heuristics 4

  • Excel 4.0 Auto_Open defined name critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME
    oletools recovered an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry from an Excel 4.0 macro sheet. The raw BIFF name can be tokenized or partially opaque to byte-string checks, but the recovered macro listing confirms the workbook has an XLM auto-execution entry.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85817e7e81383e-9951566-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85817e7e81383e-9951566-0
  • Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet present medium OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet sub-stream — XLM is rarely seen in modern legitimate workbooks and was a major Office malware vector during 2020-2022.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
a2d033763c15494b12e31c971331fca1f0f387966c5e482c3931d5611c30d5d1		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8260 bytes

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