Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 800c3c5748a17e7f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-04
MD5: 814b9384ee6b4d00c0b0114ef845d167 SHA-1: bd5c1e234c27fcedba8ab90692653a3c72e578ff SHA-256: 800c3c5748a17e7fe2e37f56f2ceabd4972a025a10286e800ed1a1916523dd39
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro, a known technique for executing malicious code. ClamAV identifies this as Emotet, a downloader family. The macro likely attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
af7e08eb74381f391d59ad043f1ef517fa450a796c57fe61d66c86ac41aaa1e8
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8147 bytes