Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 bf4b9391c804debb…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

60.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-17
MD5: 5fd76a501ebd73f0b076d4e39eb06067 SHA-1: 553b2d483a2cc90adb09bfa64ab364d9489fe754 SHA-256: bf4b9391c804debb845299808e0b2bf8fb56008034affc148f2388be88300f4f
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious File

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected by ClamAV as Emotet. The Auto_Open macro uses dangerous functions like RUN to execute code. The macro sheet contains concatenated strings that reconstruct URLs, which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The reconstructed URLs are: https://mass-gardinen-shop.de/css/AHE8baLiW/, https://kbmpti.filkom.ub.ac.id/config/LdgfVAaCy/, https://www.hangaryapi.com.tr/wp-admin/E1gb6ognvvn8HX/, and http://azreghadi.ir/wp-includes/kaiSEoHGa/.

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-ea85817e7e81383e-9951566-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85817e7e81383e-9951566-0
  • 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
a2d033763c15494b12e31c971331fca1f0f387966c5e482c3931d5611c30d5d1		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8260 bytes

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