Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ac2814ff3c89422b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

73.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-16
MD5: 800bd35865b5b6f1f0ca1b190b4feafc SHA-1: 75c22fcd56021b0d7e14ae3bf3435a0cb1ea5889 SHA-256: ac2814ff3c89422bad2705cef5e4071a74a843d0026b17057e23ef87a494f9e5
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. The Auto_Open macro uses concatenated strings to construct URLs for downloading a second-stage payload. Specifically, it reconstructs the following URLs: "http://3dstudioa.com.br/cgi-bin/yWpon1Nd03l/", "http://audioclave.adv.br/Revista/JljahSR26i5k/", "https://piabanyuwangi.or.id/wp-admin/3Se7giNXt7ZC HG/", "https://bencvendeghaz.hu/wp-includes/cLr qB Iwf8C/", "http://anatt-bar.co.il/wp-admin/kZarrjJ N148onRnRi/", and "https://ulsite.com/0a61/nm6lxocqt/". The use of XLM macros and the download functionality are characteristic of Emotet's initial infection vector.

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-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0
  • 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
9aad8521d90ca7f536d86e805137dbff97d82a2ac842ee968dd491451c1e0d83		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6831 bytes

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