Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 200f8456509d6f70…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-05
MD5: c3d71f860c941fb9a4a16f5b1ebf0c34 SHA-1: f00ce3f1fb55634b64a53caa3a4c4388729c05dc SHA-256: 200f8456509d6f70d23e575dbd09ed7de6d88ce5ca0c319f3ff98eeb94813277
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Service Execution T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. Critical heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function, which is commonly used to download and execute secondary payloads. The ClamAV detection name further supports the Emotet family attribution.

Heuristics 4

  • 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: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
e89bc6422e39a248d33ef76bc368190521d9e3258a7323eb809dcffc05edbd1d		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8116 bytes

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