Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a58c1839cd5afec1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 35349b205fe3607206c5da1ae138d98a SHA-1: 2f2a2229664bcb0e56b4123b2772f2eb3ac2e806 SHA-256: a58c1839cd5afec15724b29cce270cd49350a16fb942185dcfacf16e197500a1
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is identified as malicious by ClamAV with the signature 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0'. Static analysis reveals a Workbook_Open macro that executes a Windows Script Host object. The macro displays a message box and then proceeds to ask a series of questions to the user, likely as a social engineering tactic. The embedded batch file contains a long, obfuscated string that reconstructs to multiple URLs, indicating a downloader functionality. The presence of a CreateObject call and references to Wscript.Shell further support the execution of external scripts or commands. The reconstructed URL string is: "http://youlanda.org/eln-image/n8DPZISf/ ,http://roseveideo.net/eln-image/EjdcOMlY8Gy/,http://vbaint.com/eln-image/H2pPGte8XzENc/,https://framemaker.us/eln-image/U5W2IGE9m8i9hr/,http://niplaw.com/asons/JO5/,http://robertflolod.us/eln-image/DGI2YOkwSc9XPO/,http://mpmcomputing.com". Additionally, a registry key for persistence was reconstructed: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\IAccessible2Proxy.

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.

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