Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 304f226765160c10…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

134.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 36549b1969bf7d275ff54ba27738035b SHA-1: b7b45ea90b41e2ef00507a43d28b193623085377 SHA-256: 304f226765160c10a67d1db6544f525cbd0be1fa80cafa03582f8fc1553e0442
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file is a macro-enabled Excel document that contains VBA code designed to execute Windows scripting components and download payloads. The Workbook_Open macro is triggered upon opening, and it utilizes CreateObject to instantiate Wscript.Shell and RDS.DataSpace. The document body contains a heavily obfuscated string that, when decoded, reveals multiple URLs from which a second-stage payload is likely downloaded and executed. The presence of Wscript.Shell and the download URLs strongly indicate a downloader functionality, consistent with Emotet.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02226-9938630-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02226-9938630-0
  • 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
d6216b1540c6d866e0cdc66ed3bfa2b79b477655c56d42a698e7b407351a97e3
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 6560 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.