Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 328050ddf642f4f9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

255.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-03-17
MD5: 89319157ebf0d99453639b7c8ddcfc32 SHA-1: 477080d5a3f6567a1569af02c89eddc2bd27756f SHA-256: 328050ddf642f4f911a531a52c9a7f55de0d0061f4344e2fdf34028295f7c6af
202 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open entry, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The macros reconstruct three URLs: "https://myprintsonality.com/hjplRg1Q1VhA/Fnhbn.png", "https://bluaspect.com/S8yu21Fjtr/Fnhbn.png", and "https://newdoor-ventures.com/cD84aa5E/Fnhbn.png". These URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. ClamAV detection further supports the malicious classification, identifying it as an Emotet downloader.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0
  • 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.
  • 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 https://myprintsonality.com/hjplRg1Q1VhA/Fnhbn.png
    • https://bluaspect.com/S8yu21Fjtr/Fnhbn.png
    • https://newdoor-ventures.com/cD84aa5E/Fnhbn.png

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
901d203a4bd0f47aa486f3e324e2f32b4e077c82080565ed6d30c7bc64fa3f7d		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7168 bytes

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