Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c81737b86880212d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 7c0713c27008022b6c20f26e46c40956 SHA-1: 69ce630da9f6b6f1688c7294b9646a0fc61d9cf4 SHA-256: c81737b86880212d2c8eca5b5e5c6ebb4b618cd34b3eeea983e6eacb7b83f275
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is identified as malicious by ClamAV with the signature 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0'. Static analysis reveals a Workbook_Open VBA macro that uses CreateObject to execute Windows Script Host. The macro appears to be responsible for dropping and executing a VBScript payload from the path c:\programdata\tjspowj.vbs and a batch file from c:\programdata\uidpjewl.bat. The batch file contains obfuscated commands that attempt to download content from multiple URLs, including 'http://lbsbriefs.com/cgi/2akl8X82xEKuehui/', which is likely the next stage of the infection.

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.