Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 25ca037303bc4ec3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

40.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-12
MD5: 332de1085f32d14db440ca2c32f09513 SHA-1: 75a3be9351d3810e11e821800409a64d17a64c09 SHA-256: 25ca037303bc4ec3460eda415ffecf9c7692414208586c0bb30daf8a72f86fbb
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The critical heuristics indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open function, specifically calling dangerous APIs like RUN. ClamAV also detected this file as Emotet. The extracted URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The macro's intent is to download and execute a payload from the provided URLs.

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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