Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7d997110981fa117…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

145.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: e695af566b7132fb9201f6bfea855b02 SHA-1: a585c97060f918f58fed2b52f67673ca725bbc4b SHA-256: 7d997110981fa1174452ce7217044d117f1991aa3607f267fa7eb9b9c826b9af
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros reconstruct and attempt to download payloads from five distinct URLs, indicating a downloader functionality. The ClamAV signature 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02222-9938635-0' strongly suggests an Emotet family variant.

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 (5 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), across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell), or split across multi-char fragment cells a download formula concatenates by reference (=A1&A2&… / CONCATENATE(...)). 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, LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells, and FORMULA cell-reference concatenation in token order.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02222-9938635-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02222-9938635-0
  • 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 http://www.numberscare.com/apocholic/0zs1GFW8z/
    • https://kratomcoupons.com/wp-snapshots/rRAWKjQIH4Jlc/
    • http://www.campingforacuresl.com/newdir/yKGYdIxMOqdNzaxeA7G/
    • https://coffee.devtechnosys.info/app/8UP4CHdtji/
    • https://dautuchungkhoanquocte.com/wp-admin/X0vaYKzvcqLdmO/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
71a011c6654bf0f86fe42dabbb7815a8e04c6ae15b5b70864945acbb6f82ced0		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6768 bytes

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