Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b030ebf4f44de762…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-04
MD5: 4c7bb5a12d49232df23175c4af2501c2 SHA-1: 33a627ad4780899c2c1ef6a9a39cd147e8467f09 SHA-256: b030ebf4f44de762849de57051a80dfc68786ca92a4c9f9f7339250c80996c1b
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The sample is identified as malicious by ClamAV with the signature Xls.Downloader.Emotet. It contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open function, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The presence of the Auto_Open function and the Emotet family attribution strongly suggest this file is a downloader for a secondary payload.

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
79b6a2dec1519d1448373a7642720b0209015dc621e975f23941c2d665784b15		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8145 bytes

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