Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 6d23c26676ee2c2c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

94.4 KB Created: 2006-09-15 19:15:53 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: b4d9b505b60e2042864445c1e5de3057 SHA-1: 57e8e5784d2c42a34157019b51d4769bbb5c0169 SHA-256: 6d23c26676ee2c2c773b5502904ab97f611c929c79a28e1b507786566463741b
410 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1218.005 Signed Binary Proxy Execution: Mshta T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains a VBA macro with an Auto_Open subroutine, which is a common technique for malicious Office documents. The macro utilizes GetObject and WMI to launch processes, and specifically references mshta.exe to download content from an embedded URL. This indicates the document is designed to act as a downloader for a second-stage payload, consistent with Emotet's typical behavior. The ClamAV detection further supports this classification.

Heuristics 11

  • LOLBin reference in VBA critical OLE_VBA_LOLBIN
    LOLBin reference in VBA
  • VBA WMI Win32_Process launcher critical OLE_VBA_WMI_PROCESS_CREATE
    VBA macro builds or references a WMI moniker for Win32_Process and invokes .Create to start a command. This is a high-confidence macro execution chain that often hides the WMI class name through string concatenation or helper functions.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0
  • Reference to mshta.exe high SC_STR_MSHTA
    Reference to mshta.exe
  • Auto_Open macro high OLE_VBA_AUTO
    Auto_Open macro
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject 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.
  • LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND
    Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • Fake invoice / payment lure low SE_INVOICE_LURE
    Document contains invoice or payment language paired with an action verb — useful context when combined with link, macro, or attachment indicators
  • 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://91.240.118.172/hh/hh.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
557c882097214c255743895cb0e70759651b1dffef6be5737b5fd93877dbbf47		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 10171 bytes

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