Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 715322f8a83f7ec6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 6360379c7c6f1ca27e27141f43aa38a1 SHA-1: be709215d44d56603b898dd6a213a61c9db8c9a5 SHA-256: 715322f8a83f7ec6a5904060a06de2a09c10a97116debf867732efaa457a764d
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample contains an obfuscated VBA macro that executes via the Workbook_Open event. This macro utilizes Wscript.Shell to run a VBScript and a batch file, which in turn execute a PowerShell command. The PowerShell command is heavily obfuscated but appears to be downloading and executing a second-stage payload from multiple URLs. The ClamAV detection name 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0' strongly suggests the Emotet family.

Heuristics 7

  • 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: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • 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 macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 bytes