Emotet — Office (OLE) malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2f981bdbfbe8f4a3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE)

230.6 KB Created: 2020-08-14 22:18:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: 82832e9d90dc2fb05916e7545eb671fa SHA-1: cae3372c2c4ac55444eb014a830b47a1af9c2d17 SHA-256: 2f981bdbfbe8f4a399aaeed9be1d2a6869e33494f413d389d8dbcfa4e7039df9
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains VBA macros, specifically a Document_Open macro that utilizes a hidden UserForm command stager. This technique is characteristic of Emotet, which is known for downloading and executing further payloads. The ClamAV detection also explicitly names Emotet. The embedded URL was confirmed as benign, so no IOCs were extracted from it.

Heuristics 8

  • VBA UserForm hidden-property command stager critical OLE_VBA_USERFORM_HIDDEN_COMMAND_STAGER
    VBA auto-exec macro creates a COM object from a decoded variable and reconstructs command text through Split/Join and hidden UserForm properties such as ControlTipText, Tag, Pages, or HelpContextId. This is a high-confidence macro downloader/loader shape seen in the reviewed OLE set, but it is not an Office CVE exploit primitive.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Emotet-9343219-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Emotet-9343219-0
  • 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
a41bede6b31c342f92c22747c23e2e7c6c77a42c803725a917c6179e5e099194
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 8350 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.