Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 da0695114f256e15…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

94.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-04
MD5: ccc958bdb9fe103f56b7c08d8e52f14d SHA-1: c6b1229507cdfd68f6737400abca8611bec7dd81 SHA-256: da0695114f256e15abbcd5459c25bfe8c87766eddca9fae0c0d808b6ec715883
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic for Applications T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The critical heuristics indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open defined name, which is a known technique for executing malicious code. ClamAV detection explicitly names this file as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea81817e7f807ab1-9952142-0', strongly suggesting Emotet family involvement. The Auto_Open macro likely serves to download and execute a secondary payload.

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
f53ef20d7b825736ab3aa8011346399bc8bff01434c9a6ad04378e3281a8fd98		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8109 bytes

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