Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4b90a0d2855800ba…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

141.8 KB Created: 2022-01-19 09:31:16 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: c3860c8e0968f20713e4c90592d7bee1 SHA-1: ca12a4b1af3f45e98f487db3c6b1c503dab0ec45 SHA-256: 4b90a0d2855800baf3485d8e0c38ec0e5aea83050ceeb38061af07eca0d16feb
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is identified as malicious by ClamAV with the signature Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9936774-0, indicating a known Emotet variant. Critical heuristics confirm the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open defined name, which is a common execution vector for Emotet. The macro sheet itself is likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload.

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: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9936774-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9936774-0
  • 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
592af8991900f2f7058dc7ea90a33320ae293c7e541db4222a7b7f9c04f59d96		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8469 bytes

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