Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 920ea22048f1f86c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

88.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-29
MD5: ebd735180e89f67e8242f1c9384659db SHA-1: 0da659f196bf3feca43c1df599a6cf6286087d15 SHA-256: 920ea22048f1f86c3fd0ee220e80f23c40cd6f267a3f01ca8f7ddc0aa1e60ddb
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. The presence of an Auto_Open defined name and the use of dangerous formula APIs like RUN indicate that the macro sheet is designed to execute arbitrary commands upon opening. This is a common delivery mechanism for Emotet, which often downloads and executes further payloads.

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
2f2d15df7d681a1f7996f1257c9452a7278a924911970b6b5fbe7ccfc1eeb590		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8048 bytes

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