Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 1a886d68bb53e9a7…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c122d035b2c627b90478293c596b19ad SHA-1: a1a00f3ca6a79a6dce229dcc0d2a48771ab9a8ac SHA-256: 1a886d68bb53e9a7e8bdc14efab7a99c6845bca76838c100883bada11bc1bf7b
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample is an Excel file containing a Workbook_Open macro that executes Windows Script Host commands. The macro is designed to display multiple dialog boxes to the user, attempting to elicit interaction. It also constructs and executes a batch file that downloads a payload from multiple URLs. The presence of the 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0' ClamAV signature strongly suggests the Emotet family. The batch script reconstructs a complex command line that includes multiple URLs for downloading a payload, and also references temporary file paths like 'c:\programdata\tjspowj.vbs' and 'c:\programdata\uidpjewl.bat'.

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.