Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 48bb2a667062b43b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 890d951a01df075f9a66909a0b41324c SHA-1: 8416d4f1e05cb35807e468413c586c8f71f5f380 SHA-256: 48bb2a667062b43b2a92ca234df6422d71f7a5280a946aa8ac9b55c2938102d0
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample contains VBA macros, specifically a Workbook_Open auto-execution macro, which is a common delivery mechanism for Emotet. The script utilizes CreateObject to instantiate Wscript.Shell, enabling it to execute commands. It constructs a command line that includes a long list of URLs, indicating it's designed to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of Wscript.Shell references and the construction of executable paths like 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs' and 'c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat' further support this. The ClamAV detection name 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0' also strongly suggests the Emotet family and its downloader functionality.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • 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
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 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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