Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 aef11b693d8f70fd…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: e577e28abdc11486dd9921fc23d515b3 SHA-1: d98994979dd765d258d86b8b5fdb9ad9f1d290ad SHA-256: aef11b693d8f70fd751226d25c18cd7690f084f73adcc7d6cb9b0e5ce0fc8864
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample contains VBA macros, specifically a Workbook_Open auto-execution routine, which is a strong indicator of malicious intent. The macro uses Wscript.Shell to execute two files: 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs' and 'c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat'. The VBA code also attempts to download a second-stage payload from multiple URLs, including 'https://fullness-safety.com/-/P6x/', which is characteristic of Emotet's downloader functionality. The ClamAV detection name further supports this attribution.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • 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
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.