Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3a6950478b6d8136…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 8c2152dffbf202636e930f63c4f7d9af SHA-1: b57bbb859790ccec04d367ab171e7e166d7da4ae SHA-256: 3a6950478b6d8136e794adedfb9fd5d2291f1646cdfe984ef61887d743f71ffb
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is a macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet containing a Workbook_Open macro that executes obfuscated commands via Wscript.Shell and CreateObject. The embedded DOC BODY and script content reveal attempts to download and execute files from multiple URLs, including reconstructed URLs like 'http://lbsbriefs.com/cgi/28x82xEKueuhI/' and 'http://howebeautiful.com/eln-images/tyj208/'. The ClamAV detection as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0' strongly suggests Emotet family involvement. The script's primary intent appears to be downloading and executing a second-stage payload from the listed 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.

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