Emotet — Office (OOXML) / .XLSM malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5e74973a3c690f45…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSM

92.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000
MD5: 9c96beb72c08b259bbd4c01f0c3438e2 SHA-1: 1bbe1442ac696c3b8efe8054db07a96ceac83f48 SHA-256: 5e74973a3c690f45a034a71d82b8a040ddece717efe028d7697fa3741b8842b7
260 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an XLSM file containing heavily obfuscated VBA macros, including a Workbook_Open auto-execution routine. These macros utilize CreateObject to execute commands, specifically attempting to download and run a second-stage payload from multiple URLs. The ClamAV signature also explicitly identifies it as an Emotet downloader.

Heuristics 6

  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.EmotetRed02221-9938910-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.EmotetRed02221-9938910-0
  • 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.
  • VBA project inside OOXML medium OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
de7bcbc45ff0a77d05d9af662bacc316e71be11a980e94f6673e556a5dd9d1bc		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 12808 bytes
vbaProject_00.bin
704549f98722d6d99e5606c0ae37e3ce471e7f2dc1c69bbdcafb4418bec27944		 vba-project OOXML VBA project: xl/vbaProject.bin 37888 bytes

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