Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6bfde6ae38489414…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

104.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: bd9b6e29ea67228f11a9baca7a6083fe SHA-1: 456b4884de0fb87f716fc27185f1a40b1a583ea8 SHA-256: 6bfde6ae384894140136cf8fc8f7b0b6b2c5354ced00566535e076eb56938892
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. These macros are designed to reconstruct and execute URLs, likely to download and run a secondary payload. The ClamAV detection and the presence of multiple suspicious URLs further support this assessment, pointing towards a downloader functionality commonly associated with the Emotet family.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (5 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02220-9938626-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02220-9938626-0
  • 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.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://cableequipmentmanagementreturns.com/wp-admin/JPivizxmiwo9A5Owys/
    • http://novawedevent.com/tmp/PA0rBwFszIpy/
    • https://www.altasolutions.asia/myfiles/myB984EnOlSJJ4b9/
    • https://www.sanskriticreations.net/wp-admin/iGdDEvnMusgGlIoaR/
    • http://kiwibeautyhouse.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/qzutpR1kPAPp54/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
be1ac9f30af65ef180310243cbba4a51ea41ae015d1d5e2b649c82e30f6f4b5c		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6365 bytes

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