Emotet — Office (OOXML) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 706f7bd3c8f59b0d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSX

92.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 12.0000
MD5: 9cffea2574aec29ec45e24fd2ca616fe SHA-1: f70950867de4e013485470d69c9ae0041d41a850 SHA-256: 706f7bd3c8f59b0d0c75853c48ff655c81ec84b81964759148e17626c8b3ce30
260 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample contains a Workbook_Open macro that is heavily obfuscated and uses CreateObject to execute a second-stage payload. The ClamAV signature 'Xls.Downloader.EmotetRed02221-9938910-0' strongly suggests the Emotet family. The macro attempts to download and execute a VBScript from multiple URLs, including 'http://harperhouseproducts.com/Merchandise2/ARSf1LIcOauh1rDiH/', which is then saved as 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs'.

Heuristics 6

  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.EmotetRed02221-9938910-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.EmotetRed02221-9938910-0
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject 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.
  • VBA project inside OOXML medium OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
de7bcbc45ff0a77d05d9af662bacc316e71be11a980e94f6673e556a5dd9d1bc
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 12808 bytes
vbaProject_00.bin
8796fbaa294e4f2081e871145670cbeec56553c93084c9980299134674a83a8e
vba-project OOXML VBA project: xl/vbaProject.bin 37888 bytes