Emotet — Office (OLE) / .DOC malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 78f144aa8beee9fe…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .DOC

267.3 KB Created: 2020-02-06 15:22:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: f96f5fff89a9aa18c8f4f3143ad95f8a SHA-1: 1a44f705671535e629cbe9e82554ef8033328ade SHA-256: 78f144aa8beee9fe0ff35ffa8bfe320a406f9de38d7c5a15be2486640342e9be
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 PowerShell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file contains VBA macros, specifically a Document_Open macro designed to execute automatically. Heuristics indicate a hidden UserForm command stager, a common technique for executing payloads. ClamAV detection explicitly names this as 'Doc.Dropper.Emotet-7580044-0', strongly suggesting the Emotet family. The primary function appears to be downloading and executing a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 8

  • VBA UserForm hidden-property command stager critical OLE_VBA_USERFORM_HIDDEN_COMMAND_STAGER
    VBA auto-exec macro creates a COM object from a decoded variable and reconstructs command text through Split/Join and hidden UserForm properties such as ControlTipText, Tag, Pages, or HelpContextId. This is a high-confidence macro downloader/loader shape seen in the reviewed OLE set, but it is not an Office CVE exploit primitive.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Dropper.Emotet-7580044-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Dropper.Emotet-7580044-0
  • Document_Open macro high OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject 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.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
b40433ffa08cdfb054d81c0a0187bf4c179d03d6eee656d9c70df6e735a3f9a5
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 37815 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.