Emotet — Office (OLE) / .DOCX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b788c3eb69332103…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .DOCX

168.9 KB Created: 2020-07-29 12:56:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: 9818d6a4e594ec8dff03c6fd4115d3fc SHA-1: a0914b69782965ba17fbdf6a26f3a261d368e60e SHA-256: b788c3eb69332103a2934da12e1a1675bdda621b08a33cd5f6dca0c6980c18c3
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains VBA macros, specifically a Document_Open macro that utilizes a hidden UserForm as a command stager. This technique is characteristic of Emotet, which is known to download and execute further malicious payloads. The ClamAV detection explicitly names Emotet, reinforcing this classification. The embedded URL was confirmed as benign, so no IOCs were extracted from it.

Heuristics 8

  • VBA UserForm hidden-property command stager critical OLE_VBA_USERFORM_HIDDEN_COMMAND_STAGER
    VBA auto-exec macro creates a COM object from a decoded variable and reconstructs command text through Split/Join and hidden UserForm properties such as ControlTipText, Tag, Pages, or HelpContextId. This is a high-confidence macro downloader/loader shape seen in the reviewed OLE set, but it is not an Office CVE exploit primitive.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Emotet-9215193-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Emotet-9215193-0
  • Document_Open macro high OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_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
  • 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 http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
bc2f1bc2152021d32cefc30b7442d3fff0b32b0c5b63606daecd05a1dfaccd58
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 5056 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.