Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 280344b75960e45b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

70.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-04-29
MD5: e474d2903ba89eb6b42a7fc3efac0c8f SHA-1: 7d9cff00c1d3a5e2b7fb6ce633f15a06ab406ae9 SHA-256: 280344b75960e45bd191e408e15b677cc07fb72897289040fd72c7e48bf1d43e
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell T1204 User Execution T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open function. This function is designed to execute automatically when the workbook is opened, and it utilizes the RUN API to download and execute a payload from one of the provided URLs. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet, a known downloader family.

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-b3c5cc3b13c03bcc-9950246-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-b3c5cc3b13c03bcc-9950246-0
  • 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
023eece581745d86e8a881663e496cab25dc20dc1e2c24ba47f1be10064b9c6f		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6827 bytes

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