Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bc62676a9462e4c8…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 368913ef8787ef5a0fc267c29c406fb5 SHA-1: 1905c8c74507d2c8a2d4f8dd3b43df24032ddd00 SHA-256: bc62676a9462e4c8949e2f348e81c7e17532de55b72155bae01b48ced78e174b
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file contains VBA macros that are automatically executed upon opening, as indicated by the Workbook_Open and OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC heuristics. The script attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload using a reconstructed URL: "http://youlanda.org/eln-imageges/n8DPZISf/", "http://rosevideob.net/eln-imageges/EjdcOMlY8Gy/", "http://vbaint.com/eln-imageges/H2pPGte8XzEN/", "https://framemaker.us/eln-imageges/U5W2IGE9m8i9hr/", "http://niplaw.com/asolidfouadation/JO5/", "http://roberflolod.us/eln-imageges/DGI2YOkwS9XP/", "http://mpmcomputing.com/fonts/JO5/", "http://roberflolod.us/eln-imageges/DGI2YOkwS9XP/". The presence of Wscript.Shell and CreateObject calls, along with the ClamAV detection as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet', strongly suggests Emotet family activity. The script also attempts to establish persistence by writing to the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\IAccessible2Proxy.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0
  • 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
faf50200d5a9adeeda00cc1da1bbf8f6abf0317a1e97a58db8ae804ba12ba446
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 13985 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.