Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ce00e3457e8e4e53…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

83.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-27
MD5: 33c6a35494f9755837c95cba02fcc2fd SHA-1: d916965c8baad70b069082b6495cefc995b77b14 SHA-256: ce00e3457e8e4e53391055bcacef89e1f5423a6a7be70fa08fc24d88f43f3304
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. The critical heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, suggesting it's designed to download and execute a secondary payload. The ClamAV detection name further supports the Emotet family attribution.

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
4aae8f97f5d4761db1c94e64dfd849344331405ad7295c8dce0e83b6d9aa0f86		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8058 bytes

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