Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 1212cab72550ce0e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 4b5fe35be4cb9026301d3d5cab410d48 SHA-1: e545c518f9f2e6b3a5ea00bb8171849f9290c0a8 SHA-256: 1212cab72550ce0e1edab9e83a6eec0d7e9bbda340ff15c3d6132958a948a08b
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

This XLSX file contains heavily obfuscated VBA macros, including a Workbook_Open auto-execution loader. The script uses `CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")` to execute commands, including the creation of a VBScript file at `c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs` and a batch file at `c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat`. The batch file appears to be a downloader that uses PowerShell to fetch a second-stage payload from multiple URLs. The ClamAV detection name 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0' strongly suggests the Emotet family.

Heuristics 7

  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject 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.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 bytes

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