Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 afaff452861908fb…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

229.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: bf12394a7423c4c472b4713a080f7b13 SHA-1: c7436869b3abf27fd3528f652b4458a9293515e9 SHA-256: afaff452861908fb84af280830c2e8e7fe48d487c7bc347c3cb705d348476129
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File Execution: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell T1059.007 Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript/VBScript

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The macro reconstructs and executes URLs to download a second-stage payload. The ClamAV detection and the presence of multiple suspicious URLs strongly indicate a downloader, consistent with the Emotet family. The reconstructed URLs are "http://giversherbalproducts.com/Ad47XRSH/fok.html", "http://specialistedu.com.hk/495ivO4PQTRk/fok.html", and "http://denkyiraman.co.uk/hqzqxPNha/fok.html".

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (3 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-MSOLE2-af43432fbcb8603c-9980047-0
  • 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.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://giversherbalproducts.com/Ad47XRSH/fok.html
    • https://specialistedu.com.hk/495ivO4PQTRk/fok.html
    • https://denkyiraman.co.uk/hqzqxPNha/fok.html

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
c6b46e135e2ecf710ad422c23919e5620dc0532efaa40f2ff8f467c1a68645b8		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 11116 bytes

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