Emotet — Office (OOXML) / .XLSM malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7acbde4bafa9657b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSM

12.6 KB Created: 2025-12-15 09:14:28 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 16.0300 First seen: 2025-12-18
MD5: fc26ffd9eff9d6a9703501a03a6b430a SHA-1: 78e6d93860fdaf2fa703519376ad0830a55138bd SHA-256: 7acbde4bafa9657b6ffd3cc114dfa603efb6f93a72df33d5ff135f4db385a7cb
440 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1083 File and Directory Discovery

The sample is a macro-enabled Excel file containing a Workbook_Open macro that executes a PowerShell command. This command is obfuscated using Base64 encoding and attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload from 'http://172.16.194.51:8080/Invoke-Updates.ps1' and 'http://172.16.194.51:8080/steal.enc'. The presence of WScript.Shell and CreateObject calls further supports the malicious intent.

Heuristics 9

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • PowerShell reference in VBA critical OLE_VBA_PS
    PowerShell reference in VBA
  • ClamAV: Win.Trojan.Emotet-6397178-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Win.Trojan.Emotet-6397178-0
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_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.
  • VBA project inside OOXML medium OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
10e4fe8d090f0a57a0689259eddb118fad842329d49ac6b37e3664433f49f2f3		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 1601 bytes
vbaProject_00.bin
95a079c353a2f71b41b537560e51a2e1b28922655fd139823fac6b2e4e71bf5d		 vba-project OOXML VBA project: xl/vbaProject.bin 12288 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Win.Trojan.Emotet-6397178-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely

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