Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c2e038bc7a22e93a…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

126.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-03-29
MD5: 62796a66ac67d5e6645bba4a8f7c20f2 SHA-1: a9d4dbabfd98b433d6e4cd01b4df856473e35883 SHA-256: c2e038bc7a22e93ad5aa1d596f191fda17b7caf3366d25526f444a04846f9990
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Service Execution T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell: PowerShell

The file contains Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open function, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. The macros reconstruct and attempt to download payloads from multiple URLs. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet, a downloader family. The script's intent is to download and execute a second-stage payload from the embedded URLs.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (6 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-adc2d23d2dc26dd0-9950240-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-adc2d23d2dc26dd0-9950240-0
  • 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.
  • 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://drvishalchestclinic.com/wp-includes/SqqCZQ6y2uyFF/
    • http://funestotal.com/5aclo1em/21U/
    • http://g-wizcomputers.com/party/61W0ovBu86/
    • http://primefind.com/1mall-uk/h5/
    • http://la-csi.com/mt-admin/BB7/
    • https://pancook.com/newsite/H6xxeLefX1I2vgJFM1Y/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
baa385ee141091e506d4fc8952e60f349e2a144300202c59dbc3e03ea3f9b493		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6541 bytes

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