Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9d6d1038ee4c2b8a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 31e388a76711a5f243f0a4c1fd501baf SHA-1: 8d31288cc8829b352c6cd768bd51855f204cd394 SHA-256: 9d6d1038ee4c2b8abb06322b37c365ebef3df395f0ce3b272ec5c509664c9909
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.005 Visual Basic T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The Workbook_Open macro fires upon opening the Excel file, displaying a message box and then executing a VBScript payload. The VBScript payload is constructed from multiple concatenated strings, ultimately downloading and executing a second-stage payload from a list of URLs. The ClamAV detection and the presence of a Workbook_Open macro with CreateObject calls strongly indicate the Emotet family. The reconstructed URL for the VBScript payload is 'http://youlanda.org/eln-images/n8DPZISf/'. The reconstructed command line for the batch script is 'echo GHJDFTGjTJTFhdzsrS47dfgjhKGUHXnxcvNr hrtHGXMNJgNxdzRFgh57dtFJUgXHJHDFgrH&start/B /WAIT %kjXDFgjrth5%%KFfklhgJxdh%%etaRHjDhfd4%%iiPgjlfJds467%%XCVzWRet4%%NmvbmxdrtX7sd5rs%%DRGhREkjif%&echo dgfhakirjshgfJgfJd57udgfJxsDGFjxDSHzDFHDZFHdgfxs547dfhJXGHJXDFHdrf4s6dfh'.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_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.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
faf50200d5a9adeeda00cc1da1bbf8f6abf0317a1e97a58db8ae804ba12ba446
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 13985 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.