Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d0f7524b0d653e96…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

129.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 5279c660b461cba446787f4d6b0cab7e SHA-1: dd9ab905ae923ddd9e0f901af4fcb2c26bf95438 SHA-256: d0f7524b0d653e960c66fb332760cf07c51ad4c9ec1e7a21e5ee162129ddaa84
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is identified as malicious by ClamAV with the signature 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0'. The VBA macros contain a Workbook_Open auto-execution routine that uses Wscript.Shell to create objects and run commands. Specifically, it attempts to execute the file 'c:\programdata\ughldskbhn.bat' and also 'c:\programdata\yhjlswle.vbs'. The script also contains a long, obfuscated string that reconstructs to a list of URLs, likely for downloading additional payloads. The presence of Wscript.Shell, auto-execution VBA, and the download URLs strongly indicate a downloader functionality consistent with the Emotet family.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetRed02220-9938909-0
  • 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
7a075e02dc1e88807280b9b84946715e79a3c091d50391301434649c77b78ea1
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 12808 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.