Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 0c26a5a340ff58b7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

101.6 KB Created: 2022-01-21 14:27:47 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 1a0f6fab809d55cee9f87b68ac0b35c2 SHA-1: 581d3b235246535bf3a91851ffc609cad3d9911f SHA-256: 0c26a5a340ff58b75ce88e2a781cc9f2416b3247c89c99ae26915677d4320503
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open defined name, which is a critical indicator of malicious intent. The macro executes a command to download a payload from the URL 'http://0xb907d607/fer/fe3.html'. ClamAV detection further confirms this as Emotet, a known downloader family.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0
  • 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
cd5d6e3253e3a898dc9d63d15113da3fd9fff8e87bda9543bb3d23d907be4b46
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2903 bytes