Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 43c9f9efaf685654…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

102.0 KB Created: 2022-01-21 14:27:47 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: d71224b18c18eb99ca7ba30827f9a035 SHA-1: b0b12d9eb8d74633dedd69d0c481bb09766ac9d5 SHA-256: 43c9f9efaf6856547f4d99c31ac8d78dbed381cfd09826b6a1b08efc9b261397
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open entry, which is a critical indicator. The macro executes a command to download and run a payload from the URL 'http://0xb907d607/fer/fe3.html'. This behavior is consistent with Emotet's typical delivery mechanism, which often involves macro-enabled documents acting as initial droppers.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0
  • 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
cd5d6e3253e3a898dc9d63d15113da3fd9fff8e87bda9543bb3d23d907be4b46		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2903 bytes

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