Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8780e38ceea5e9c1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

91.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-11-09
MD5: c923d2a2d9c4193171d80a850babe90a SHA-1: 8e729e6fe2491b6566a3f41973c8891423c5ac3b SHA-256: 8780e38ceea5e9c1fdb8b950b3a2b722b4127b59b1bcd59c5fb0c38973c8fc63
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an Excel 4.0 spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro, a known technique for executing malicious code. ClamAV detection explicitly identifies it as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet'. The macro uses dangerous functions like RUN, indicating it's designed to download and execute a secondary 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-ca2435d8af069a3f-9977227-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ca2435d8af069a3f-9977227-0
  • 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
d257eeacfdd0ebd80c596903cda49708fd6b35f0e9b7abf8a9083cbeec92a283		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8344 bytes

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