Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 27907f19765b66e2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: be2fc3e089a1b7cad68c51fae3949381 SHA-1: 9170c662dd6a9de96422d7529495457ac386b8a9 SHA-256: 27907f19765b66e2d69188be6f59ebbfd89e1eca51227d0362e8047211254634
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 90%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains a Workbook_Open VBA macro that executes a series of MsgBox prompts, likely as a lure. The macro also calls CreateObject and references Wscript.Shell, indicating it intends to execute external scripts. The DOC BODY and script excerpts reveal reconstructed strings for malicious VBScript and batch files, including the reconstructed URL 'http://youlanda.org/eln-image/n8DPZISf/' and the persistence registry key 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\IAccessible2Proxy'. The ClamAV detection as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet' strongly suggests the Emotet family.

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.