Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 adc2a206727188a1…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

80.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-18
MD5: 0b2cd2869b2709dd187ff985c4b5746a SHA-1: fa32bbc6cdfbc7710586e5c095246e932ecb2c61 SHA-256: adc2a206727188a15c26f5bc057262d7ab27087bb48356efaf9f017bb048f7e0
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The critical heuristics indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open function, specifically calling the RUN API. ClamAV also detected this as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet'. The macro content, though partially truncated, shows string concatenation to form URLs, which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The reconstructed URLs are: http://beeslandkanderman.ir/XPFvBDrNk/lUkOx4VAOizId7u/, http://cerdi.com/_derived/J4Fu7VmGZQ7rGA/, https://www.chasingmavericks.co.ke/agendaafrkadebates.co.ke/QznFMKV9R/, and https://bsmakina.com.tr/logo/eVWaAWm/.

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
7ab5ef6689937532951c996fe211a2ac046a3dbc546728bfe725212729605929		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6790 bytes

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