Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a2413425c38cf562…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

88.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-29
MD5: 28e5329d8197968150ce0ec7f7f74a26 SHA-1: c3cab649f377edd7c0118f9bf26a899608e5e97c SHA-256: a2413425c38cf56249c8460241e86ba0c6d88f2011dff6b186913ea7ca31e21b
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. The critical heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions, suggesting it's designed to download and execute a secondary payload. The SHA256 hash is included as an IOC.

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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