Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 1914903bb73bab61…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: bc367dc05bc9a57771f76bf079e49053 SHA-1: 17fa93f2c4b6185bbe307d6a69afd38dbaaaab8b SHA-256: 1914903bb73bab6168043979ac1c8ec640d9ea23a2e20b163d4b18c49fe2c973
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is a macro-enabled Excel file identified as Emotet by ClamAV. The Workbook_Open macro is triggered upon opening, which uses CreateObject to instantiate Wscript.Shell. This script then proceeds to write and execute a batch file (`c:\programdata\uidpjewl.bat`) and a VBScript (`c:\programdata\tjspowj.vbs`). The batch file contains a heavily obfuscated command that appears to download payloads from multiple URLs. The VBA macro's intent is to download and execute a second-stage payload, consistent with Emotet's typical behavior.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0
  • 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.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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
faf50200d5a9adeeda00cc1da1bbf8f6abf0317a1e97a58db8ae804ba12ba446		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 13985 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.

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