Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d642109e621c6758…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

80.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-19
MD5: 64d4ab18bbd8e191f74fc14198fdec87 SHA-1: 0a13d417f779071b5263163ad7da839e6b3c5738 SHA-256: d642109e621c6758027c2fc0e5ea3d1126963a001ab1858b95f82e09403943bd
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. ClamAV detection confirms this as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet'. The macro is designed to download a second-stage payload from one of the provided URLs, which is a common Emotet delivery technique.

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-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0
  • 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
cb87d95882d005d2842ec189bdbc8cafa08a77312428358f3e2aaca9da4e9a29		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 7834 bytes

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