Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 779e47c70cc3b3ff…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

94.0 KB Created: 2006-09-15 19:15:53 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 3c18dab350ef3af53f2c7baa53b304bc SHA-1: c8423346570e45c86fdad8a292705a0f4f1e6a25 SHA-256: 779e47c70cc3b3ff1d0c32be8628fab209b8b443bcef6b7c7e731b2889b39a5c
410 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1218.005 Signed Binary Proxy Execution: Mshta T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is an Excel file containing a VBA macro with an Auto_Open subroutine. This macro utilizes GetObject and CreateObject to launch a WMI process, specifically targeting Win32_Process. It also references mshta.exe, indicating an intent to download and execute a payload from a remote URL. The ClamAV detection and heuristic firings strongly suggest this is an Emotet variant designed to download additional malware.

Heuristics 11

  • LOLBin reference in VBA critical OLE_VBA_LOLBIN
    LOLBin reference in VBA
  • VBA WMI Win32_Process launcher critical OLE_VBA_WMI_PROCESS_CREATE
    VBA macro builds or references a WMI moniker for Win32_Process and invokes .Create to start a command. This is a high-confidence macro execution chain that often hides the WMI class name through string concatenation or helper functions.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-a5251d3d2d6d3722-9951020-0
  • Reference to mshta.exe high SC_STR_MSHTA
    Reference to mshta.exe
  • Auto_Open macro high OLE_VBA_AUTO
    Auto_Open macro
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject 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.
  • LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND
    Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • Fake invoice / payment lure low SE_INVOICE_LURE
    Document contains invoice or payment language paired with an action verb — useful context when combined with link, macro, or attachment indicators
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://91.240.118.172/hh/hh.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
557c882097214c255743895cb0e70759651b1dffef6be5737b5fd93877dbbf47		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 10171 bytes

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