Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 76c732a03d42d06d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-06
MD5: 3035cbb811f7a4f35dbb14a1d91f0336 SHA-1: d4eb5a951c3666b24f9c175f0e505f2bfc49e4eb SHA-256: 76c732a03d42d06d5705adf3a75f1ee9609b5a9e3cdbe9e83776d63a5d32f4d5
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 macro that utilizes dangerous functions like RUN. ClamAV identifies this as Xls.Downloader.Emotet, indicating its purpose is to download and execute a secondary payload. The presence of the Auto_Open macro and the Emotet family attribution strongly suggest a spearphishing attachment delivery method.

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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4f34fd1307a09342878b8be85d4d409b83d3421c1197f96ad55709632b35e483		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8170 bytes

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