Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 190367cbee3b5c9d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

247.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 221465ff1ee6ff1bdd0b86481ca23aff SHA-1: 6161e166a3d6c6efff737aa6de5645b81c63e35c SHA-256: 190367cbee3b5c9dc2ffc43fd566aeb40028ce674dc86af50df938be94ef78af
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros reconstruct and reference three URLs, which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. ClamAV detection also identifies this as an Emotet downloader.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0
  • 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 https://projectgora.com/h02jMo6ez/li.html
    • https://twobudgettravelers.com/F9AOdLDgn7E/li.html
    • https://soringesprings.com/FKhpWSy3vQM/li.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
0ebd95d39a71c55c2158b281356fbc5a73b62478fbaeadb9d8a4c573e75430eb		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11661 bytes

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