Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 35c4c43eda9dd6fe…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

63.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-15
MD5: b01630b31ffd3468167ce96505a9b65f SHA-1: 6b6680ff728d9a11948804592b1d3be5e9bd86ea SHA-256: 35c4c43eda9dd6fede052b8c1bf18a910f3e115d06ab56a08b9c713f644f5775
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. The macro constructs and executes URLs to download a second-stage payload. ClamAV identifies the file as Xls.Downloader.Emotet. The reconstructed URLs are: http://cedeco.es/js/n74fS/, http://balticontrolbd.com/cgi-bin/Gu0xn0kIsGsJF8/, https://fikti.bem.gunadarma.ac.id/SDM/qNeMUe2RvxdvuRlF/, and https://www.careofu.com/PHPExc/sQ78BedriN बिजbG Yj/.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
81a890043a2bf9bada66e5f829f683706b013cf3d1f82e11ea536e934629d60f		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8316 bytes

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