Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 18b157f5843c54c0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

53.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-04-21
MD5: 9b1be2a7e1c70218e06bbcc309e0138b SHA-1: 493fec42fa85ce419a3ce4fa82ffd95fbefde70f SHA-256: 18b157f5843c54c07e5fc9ff0e256514cd0df36a5dbe7a614f26158ca4efae30
202 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros are designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of the embedded URLs. ClamAV detection further supports the classification as Emotet, a downloader family.

Heuristics 5

  • 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: Doc.Downloader.Emotet04222-9946520-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Emotet04222-9946520-0
  • 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.
  • 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://gandhitoday.org/video/6JvA8/
    • http://djunreal.co.uk/site/ApOKpFad/
    • http://johnsonsmedia.it/img/ZBNk0xpRL8YEVl/
    • https://fpd.cl/cgi-bin/N/
    • http://genccagdas.com.tr/assets/doWHIxLe7e/
    • http://grafischer.ch/fit-well/wDPTwKtZPoWL12/�

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
beb0c554ad63c5f2722c80e0b78d729b3adbe1de27a782527a8b7a3f85e11f34		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8288 bytes

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