Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 43ceb60cc106af90…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

252.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 6cc8d59b068b0f31574ddc6135894f42 SHA-1: 22ba986d1539ff38e665555af8d487aa3cb2d334 SHA-256: 43ceb60cc106af90bbc2593ac119a7374fbea976408d181d48bd1ece724d8a1f
262 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 macro that utilizes dangerous functions. These macros reconstruct and execute URLs pointing to external resources. ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature, identifying it as an Emotet downloader. The script's intent is to download and execute a second-stage payload from the embedded URLs.

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://orthomay.com.br/GD7A3PSD4zc/tw.html
    • https://quebradadigital.com.br/ag2DVqIM/w.html
    • https://mustafakhafimsp.af/UnE5kOnX/tw.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
7f7c80d5caeaf0a3da27c73e59984c758228750205ac010ee0d8c2e576fbb6bc		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11375 bytes

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