Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8e2fac8ee6436a38…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

80.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-15
MD5: a3040078e86fecccd470ee3fb5ef8037 SHA-1: 0f18e18b9474607182ffb62818909f2e1a0c48b7 SHA-256: 8e2fac8ee6436a38b4e91e54964ca9def5c5e68b88e33d28b58b4b2614d191a6
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 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function, to execute code. ClamAV identifies the file as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet'. The extracted URLs are likely used to download the next stage of the Emotet payload. The macro sheet contains an Auto_Open defined name, confirming the execution path.

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
2fdf21f2db447f9be93416b81af1c740576c18d6efe5c8c6f3d215a65c941f1d		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6790 bytes

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