Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e099be7b0c6f692f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

70.2 KB Created: 2022-01-20 19:00:43 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: f53af1c2679b7a9ef433ec672c0fa741 SHA-1: 10be90f951ed443cd5f2c0102847fcbefe935434 SHA-256: e099be7b0c6f692f34ca73c32d72d85e9f0465fcf630dc6d929ff4280496c27b
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The critical heuristics OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN and OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros designed to auto-execute. ClamAV detection further confirms this as 'Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0', a known Emotet variant. The macro sheet contains an Auto_Open entry, which is a common technique for malware to initiate execution upon file opening, typically to download and execute a further stage.

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetExcel01220-9937164-0
  • 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
7f1f89a8b36a750dced08313a4e4f056192a6eac7194357c673dbbd2670a1a18
xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 4219 bytes