Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e41862e6cf7c3206…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

91.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-11-10
MD5: 30c683519923457efd9422b2eb3f2421 SHA-1: be84a1176ebff85b4790a8fa10cb68c6c8d9c10b SHA-256: e41862e6cf7c3206fe699b624046c6d3f7ecd59fce0ddca1aadcc87b30545949
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Service Execution T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected as Emotet by ClamAV. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous formula APIs, specifically the RUN function, to likely download and execute a secondary payload. The ClamAV detection name further supports the Emotet family attribution.

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-ca2435d8af069a3f-9977227-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ca2435d8af069a3f-9977227-0
  • 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
b1c3de1886eab5af647b5ea57d33c821db26b18b5d4203025871c7d4324b37e6		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8385 bytes

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