Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d9f3108aaba67cd6…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: ccb98f4d093e527c43f0130462658c73 SHA-1: fdcecf235a7bb46e91ad4a2a0533233bd125a646 SHA-256: d9f3108aaba67cd69413d61ada8694153fb70b019ebf8d5e9c67c83c096b8424
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is a malicious Excel file containing a Workbook_Open VBA macro. This macro utilizes Windows Script Host (Wscript.Shell) to execute a batch file (`c:\programdata\uidpjewl.bat`) which in turn downloads and executes a VBScript payload (`c:\programdata\tjspowj.vbs`). The batch file contains a heavily obfuscated command that attempts to download payloads from multiple URLs, including `http://youlanda.org/eln-image/n8DPZISf/`. The VBA macro also attempts to establish persistence by writing to the registry key `HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\IAccessible2Proxy`.

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.