Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d2d72dfcfa6650c2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

101.0 KB Created: 2022-04-01 07:14:19 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-04-05
MD5: 36841d6ce4a3b296af45096d69c5fcef SHA-1: b67336a0cf0e51b0cba21e01631efb5aedc4575f SHA-256: d2d72dfcfa6650c222446586023b80058e3ba2cecef100c69be0e706d1dd0073
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Critical heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. The macro constructs several URLs by concatenating string literals, such as 'http://dlfreight.com/wp-includes/zLuzdtVkoriGTaRE/', which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of 'regsvsr32.exe' suggests a potential attempt to download and run a malicious executable.

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-b2cbc93e36c0c13e-9950560-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-b2cbc93e36c0c13e-9950560-0
  • 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
66a420ef679e9f3d020a70001f9e809f7b557357f1c23d3c5d6bcd0b0973a144		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7055 bytes

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