Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 77f1c89eb87eb126…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

247.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 50dd7a7670381cdc33df4dd3ee297382 SHA-1: 9151e497274aa1924251f8365104f652a73cb2cd SHA-256: 77f1c89eb87eb126ed2c54e2e079f8560dbae9436b6cd2c1a8ca07679bed2f4b
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled workbook that contains an Auto_Open macro. This macro uses dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function, to execute code. The macro reconstructs three URLs from concatenated strings: "h"&"t"&"t"&"p"&"s"&":"&"//ileadafricanow.org/gZPZb6yK/n2.html", "h"&"t"&"t"&"p"&"s"&":"&"/"&"/gcmhp.ps/0BDRCN8DXn/n3.html", and "h"&"t"&"t"&"p"&"s"&":"&"/"&"/serviceexpress.com.br/7mpBmsflb7fe/n1.html". These URLs are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. ClamAV detection further confirms this as Xls.Downloader.Emotet.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0
  • 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.
  • 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 https://ileadafricanow.org/gZPZb6yK/n2.html
    • https://gcmhp.ps/0BDRCN8DXn/n3.html
    • https://serviceexpress.com.br/7mpBmsflb7fe/n1.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
9f390265425713d6b44ef5f4ea4e0e5bb0aa5d8ed7f7161e7e0fe955bb4f5fea		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11933 bytes

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