Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 af86124d12773c86…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

70.3 KB Created: 2022-01-20 19:00:43 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 0802e1fc6e767671da9d99c92e83cc81 SHA-1: 63602be1ee30bf06c74b837420c8542bd9287ae8 SHA-256: af86124d12773c861ad103419ab9f04ada33b95ff6919a1a9f9c4dfe2d49131f
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The critical heuristic firings indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open entry, which is a common delivery mechanism for Emotet. ClamAV detection further confirms this, identifying the file as 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0'. The macro sheet likely contains code to download and execute a second-stage payload, consistent with Emotet's behavior.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0
  • 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
7f1f89a8b36a750dced08313a4e4f056192a6eac7194357c673dbbd2670a1a18		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4219 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.