Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 04a612f36c1f1519…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

94.1 KB Created: 2006-09-15 19:15:53 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b6ef9d210543ebc8512cf50b3457499a SHA-1: ef0cc5f2e34306918928226d5d3496d5bb83a642 SHA-256: 04a612f36c1f1519bc7cd040a970b30b8a6db2d6f8ae124a5df98e1a86187a21
410 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.007 JavaScript

The sample is an Excel document containing a VBA macro with an Auto_Open subroutine. This macro utilizes GetObject and CreateObject to launch Win32_Process, indicating an attempt to execute arbitrary code. The presence of 'mshta http://' in the document text and the embedded URL strongly suggest that the macro is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL, consistent with Emotet downloader behavior. ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature.

Heuristics 11

  • LOLBin reference in VBA critical OLE_VBA_LOLBIN
    LOLBin reference in VBA
  • VBA WMI Win32_Process launcher critical OLE_VBA_WMI_PROCESS_CREATE
    VBA macro builds or references a WMI moniker for Win32_Process and invokes .Create to start a command. This is a high-confidence macro execution chain that often hides the WMI class name through string concatenation or helper functions.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0
  • Reference to mshta.exe high SC_STR_MSHTA
    Reference to mshta.exe
  • Auto_Open macro high OLE_VBA_AUTO
    Auto_Open macro
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND
    Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • Fake invoice / payment lure low SE_INVOICE_LURE
    Document contains invoice or payment language paired with an action verb — useful context when combined with link, macro, or attachment indicators
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://91.240.118.172/hh/hh.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
557c882097214c255743895cb0e70759651b1dffef6be5737b5fd93877dbbf47		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 10171 bytes

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