Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7f3a61c8d438e5a0…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 0b51378ba429190fdfaac00914b452c7 SHA-1: b2bc7199b6ec8703532ed6d0c059c951bee56db6 SHA-256: 7f3a61c8d438e5a0ac84bffb7658b4d4b874655fa2da168083edaaccf9dbe508
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1059.005 Visual Basic T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample contains VBA macros that execute Windows Script Host (Wscript.Shell) to run obfuscated commands. The script attempts to create and execute a VBScript file at 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs' and a batch file at 'c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat'. The batch file appears to be a downloader for additional payloads, with several URLs reconstructed from obfuscated strings. The presence of Wscript.Shell calls and the execution of external scripts strongly indicate a downloader functionality, consistent with the Emotet family.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • 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.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.