Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 67d620bdd7518e5a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

71.1 KB Created: 2022-01-20 19:00:43 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 808a2fa15fedbf76e7d7742329381823 SHA-1: 2368cd54ea53286a2a9f35c973b5bb16ede1a992 SHA-256: 67d620bdd7518e5afea9ddc65ea59587f4f46404993ff451386b85f4bb48fd23
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet, identified by the presence of an Auto_Open defined name in an XLM macro sheet. ClamAV detection confirms it as 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0', strongly suggesting Emotet family. The XLM macro is likely responsible for downloading and executing a secondary payload, a common Emotet tactic.

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.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0
  • 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
7f1f89a8b36a750dced08313a4e4f056192a6eac7194357c673dbbd2670a1a18
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4219 bytes