Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 57f413a56a9884bf…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 95209e8471831c0482342b72ffe0c3c0 SHA-1: 1a689c26cb9710f04301b2c53f404b81b13a9e7e SHA-256: 57f413a56a9884bf64b58bc74ffaecbf22427914b8bd7270a5f7482c1c2306dd
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command and Shell T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample contains VBA macros that execute upon opening the workbook, indicated by the Workbook_Open heuristic. The script utilizes Wscript.Shell to create and execute two files: 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs' and 'c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat'. The VBA code reconstructs the command to run these files, suggesting a downloader or initial execution stage. The ClamAV detection 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0' strongly suggests an Emotet family infection. The script also attempts to reconstruct a URL from concatenated strings, which is likely used for downloading further payloads.

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.