Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 67d84182f4307c39…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

80.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-19
MD5: 9af0f8a73923221ea685f84b54732f75 SHA-1: 1847fb899d9462bb52f695dca2c48a7fcefbd3e0 SHA-256: 67d84182f4307c392d4e7c55156211d5fc456b4d3ff86e99b86eb4e21c68b976
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The macro attempts to download a payload from multiple URLs, including 'http://noelworks.com/band/44/'. This behavior is consistent with Emotet's downloader functionality.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0
  • 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
cb87d95882d005d2842ec189bdbc8cafa08a77312428358f3e2aaca9da4e9a29		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7834 bytes

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