Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e26c9d13bd292d95…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

78.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-13
MD5: 250eaa647eea4a037852143ef4495c36 SHA-1: 2b8097a506136474ba313c126600e5bf39cddcf2 SHA-256: e26c9d13bd292d955320280ebc406b47e8cb26b645c2147f85f1937341fb7b29
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious Link/Object: Malicious File T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. The macro attempts to construct a URL by concatenating strings and then downloads and executes a file named 't.exe' from that URL into the System32 directory. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet.

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-add2d22d2bc26dd0-9950243-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-add2d22d2bc26dd0-9950243-0
  • 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
214b0200160a0a56c6b45537e99f08bf5e131e2710192ec67ed6ddfaa9428b75		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6825 bytes

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