Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c1f4d71ab8988e83…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-11
MD5: 74619eca585fb0c0dda0efb743c010c0 SHA-1: ed9373f42c5fa94fa51c8953523938168b9dc2d0 SHA-256: c1f4d71ab8988e83394d7f9c9c87147d82a72a9049d4a1525605dbad8d4e494c
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The presence of the 'RUN' function within the macro indicates it is designed to download and execute a secondary payload. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet.

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
4f34fd1307a09342878b8be85d4d409b83d3421c1197f96ad55709632b35e483		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8170 bytes

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