Emotet Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis — malicious · 6ea579ec56176a94

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-11

MD5: d186c9943a5f22092eb4e1e4b3d8ee15 SHA-1: f6c5288eae9941f4c4559ab9743792d0c84ddbeb SHA-256: 6ea579ec56176a945cfe4069e9b7272bfd0f80ba813d6505a9c5231476552c07

200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK

T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an Excel XLS document containing Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open entry. Heuristics indicate the use of dangerous functions within these macros, consistent with downloader behavior. ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature, identifying it as Emotet. The Auto_Open macro is designed to execute a secondary payload, likely a downloader, upon opening the document.

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-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION

ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0
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.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`xlm_macros.txt` `f780f2f0b255d9b5c8d43322c472f1949ea3df20cb16d30fabf5956ffbd7149b`	xlm-macro	oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing)	8112 bytes

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