Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3af6702a8a7e0a33…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

247.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 4d69009d56886e9c8ef28b77bf413cd7 SHA-1: 7daeda8a4cb5404603caba954135ece205d62d05 SHA-256: 3af6702a8a7e0a33c010d3d591a906e39ef5cec4913e3ad4c33c4a400ca728fa
262 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 that contains an Auto_Open macro. This macro is designed to execute dangerous functions, including downloading content from three distinct URLs. The ClamAV detection and the presence of XLM macros strongly indicate the Emotet family, which commonly uses this delivery method to download and execute further stages.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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://ileadafricanow.org/gZPZb6yK/n2.html
    • https://gcmhp.ps/0BDRCN8DXn/n3.html
    • https://serviceexpress.com.br/7mpBmsflb7fe/n1.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
9f390265425713d6b44ef5f4ea4e0e5bb0aa5d8ed7f7161e7e0fe955bb4f5fea		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11933 bytes

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