Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e53c14a126671ea2…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

95.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-07-11
MD5: 8b9abce632c8ca35a69f413351b886ba SHA-1: 14fdb3b1b279fb0f63ecc10a5146611520b3c523 SHA-256: e53c14a126671ea2d4d3c5229f1d53ebc064893e039025e63df26bae05d945b0
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet detected by ClamAV as Emotet. The presence of an Auto_Open function and the use of dangerous formula APIs (RUN=0) strongly indicate that the macro sheet is designed to automatically execute code upon opening. This code is likely responsible for downloading and executing a secondary payload, consistent with Emotet's typical behavior.

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
85773188e79d904ef8ecf815a27f3a8200cc87e1822ab4901cc9bed29c53e636		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8156 bytes

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