Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a71bb4d389320c8d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

151.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 60fcf538e461f143cca1b05a78fabe5c SHA-1: 78429b972775eba4e1092163fa1b5b24718ea328 SHA-256: a71bb4d389320c8dce92a4cdb936ef823c6fe6928d818ad49df4d55884be45f7
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel document containing VBA macros, specifically a Workbook_Open macro that executes a shell command. The script attempts to download and run a batch file from a hardcoded path, 'c:\programdata\jledshf.bat'. The embedded VBA code also contains obfuscated strings that appear to be URLs, likely for downloading additional payloads. The ClamAV detection and heuristic firings strongly indicate this is a downloader associated with the Emotet family.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02226-9938630-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel02226-9938630-0
  • 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
c49f2df77c50e10269216d97c3efdf7c32f9f18ba5d8fd42a9b144f48e100040
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 5709 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.