Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 23f794cc8a7022ea…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

40.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-12
MD5: 679d7aa7b8373f42e380e08581092f32 SHA-1: 620027ac4f1ab77136a598a66e5de6504e873215 SHA-256: 23f794cc8a7022ea9c31ea6dbb8a6235d805b60b52a837d538dc1be46c1ce468
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The ClamAV detection and heuristic firings strongly indicate this is a downloader for the Emotet family. The macro is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of the provided URLs. The presence of multiple URLs suggests a fallback mechanism for payload delivery.

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-adc2d23d2dc26dd0-9950240-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-adc2d23d2dc26dd0-9950240-0
  • 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
214b0200160a0a56c6b45537e99f08bf5e131e2710192ec67ed6ddfaa9428b75		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6825 bytes

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