Emotet — Office (OLE) / .DOCX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9a8e7d6e31495cc9…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .DOCX

154.2 KB Created: 2020-12-28 15:43:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: bb15e567cd6dfeb5c4e93c6027bcbc43 SHA-1: 96baa6e32b311e9d5463d0115aa7afdeb3388a91 SHA-256: 9a8e7d6e31495cc96004924dffa63ed326d2b0a5cd3acc5c67b0cfcd06576faa
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1059.001 PowerShell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer T1547.001 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder

The file contains VBA macros, specifically a Document_Open auto-execution macro, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The heuristic firings suggest the macro uses CreateObject to download and execute a second-stage payload, a common technique for malware like Emotet. The ClamAV detection name further supports this attribution. The document body, though heavily obfuscated, contains patterns consistent with lures for password-protected archives, indicating a delivery mechanism designed to bypass security controls.

Heuristics 8

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02224-9938637-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02224-9938637-0
  • Document_Open macro high OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • Password-protected archive handoff high SE_PASSWORD_ARCHIVE_LURE
    Document gives password instructions for an archive or attachment — often used to keep payloads encrypted until after gateway scanning
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
a004a96685dc375590aeec65acf06fce9e74ef2bbe0aa7a48bc315f9645e3700		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 6009 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.

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