Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7414c684144e43d6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

73.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-31
MD5: 1d30145b66743506688fc503c7c27151 SHA-1: 1a32648cd880ef415d8981cc9ec6e4d7b6cb72af SHA-256: 7414c684144e43d65b415953fcd6c0c43e0052116d0a16df1ad842ed7a140f53
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, including an Auto_Open entry, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros are designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from a list of URLs. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet malware.

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-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0
  • 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
fdb09a1b61b705eb475721fb55c8ce0007c73c3d7d79d9138daf058de3e5ad8a		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6827 bytes

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