Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2a4c8190ec9881dd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 19a5737f31f2a41cea7b503bf706c94d SHA-1: 3097b412d512add3c3d8f522ce629a35b33ebf28 SHA-256: 2a4c8190ec9881dd72db657de33189118c3fe837fed645a5e3ba314fd3a4f0eb
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains VBA macros that are automatically executed upon opening the workbook, as indicated by the Workbook_Open event firing. The script references Wscript.Shell and uses CreateObject, suggesting it's designed to execute commands or scripts. The DOC BODY contains a batch script that appears to download and execute a VBScript payload from multiple URLs. The ClamAV detection as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0' strongly suggests an Emotet family infection. The script's intent is to download and execute a second-stage payload from the embedded URLs.

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.