Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a77eca65070f599e…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

151.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f86f12b40a614facb1b1319271febfe6 SHA-1: cdba3c649e0975790ecbaed95e7513421f02f481 SHA-256: a77eca65070f599e83d85080f3d35823c406d9b1fbfe45063e8cb8bd3034b104
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample contains VBA macros, specifically a Workbook_Open subroutine, which is a common Emotet delivery technique. The script utilizes Wscript.Shell to execute a batch file located at 'c:\programdata\jledshf.bat'. This batch file appears to be responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload from a complex, obfuscated URL. The presence of 'Wscript.Shell' and the execution of a batch file strongly indicate a downloader functionality.

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.