Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 06be5b0b88d4181b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

94.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-04
MD5: 2c5f94f9652766ebc795b69e37e56e4b SHA-1: 7fb272be6937edc11abeed7d9a13f22b6c33259c SHA-256: 06be5b0b88d4181b786771109be02a672b37cb79de99869529b8851b535a0319
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. The presence of an Auto_Open defined name and the use of dangerous formula APIs in the XLM macro indicate that the file is designed to automatically execute malicious code upon opening. This macro likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload, consistent with Emotet's typical behavior.

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-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0
  • 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
709f648888ea73fd84d73069053983f59de0087fb650fa2050897e85b5ddffd2		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8122 bytes

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