Emotet — Office (OLE) / .DOCX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2a21b9e449f592a8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .DOCX

175.7 KB Created: 2020-10-02 15:03:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: 282e6cc620b170522e0e1addc0745776 SHA-1: ec32a736615ea089cf5fecdc1176ee716cf0108c SHA-256: 2a21b9e449f592a84c88da4a43433767cff13a76206b98fd1c58e1c2a1534877
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File

The critical ClamAV detection and high-severity heuristics for VBA macros, including auto-execution and CreateObject calls, strongly indicate malicious intent. The presence of a Document_Open macro suggests an attempt to immediately execute malicious code upon opening. The ClamAV signature "Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02224-9938637-0" points towards the Emotet family, known for its downloader capabilities. The obfuscated document body content is likely part of the lure, but the primary malicious activity is driven by the VBA macros which are designed to download and execute a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02224-9938637-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02224-9938637-0
  • Document_Open macro high OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_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
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
9c73b282cef1909acf6926cc6a46e0c4c3197855b1b22198afbc8de664dfe7ba
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 10626 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 53 Chr/ChrW string-construction calls. Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.