Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c50ff73171a44b63…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

71.2 KB Created: 2022-01-20 19:00:43 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 723b72be888e5e07034c3ab7047ef46a SHA-1: 290bb9dbf9d39effe04eb44e4774fbf245a63bee SHA-256: c50ff73171a44b630603da4098f2807aaba93b2d3ee5dcf6f50fae6357e46c5d
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell

The file is an Excel XLS document containing Excel 4.0 macros, specifically an Auto_Open macro. ClamAV identified this as Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0, strongly suggesting the Emotet family. The presence of an Auto_Open macro indicates that the malware executes automatically upon opening the document, likely to download and execute a second-stage payload. The document body contains generic text, providing no specific lure.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0
  • 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
7f1f89a8b36a750dced08313a4e4f056192a6eac7194357c673dbbd2670a1a18		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4219 bytes

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