Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e7246cf54a9167ee…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

80.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-16
MD5: b76df180cd5dde198aa1c7a9d19b0a4c SHA-1: 9bda9c97e57cd06b0751521be12f9fe0d6f9c83e SHA-256: e7246cf54a9167eefcd466b38bdbb57f50d3479e3ee6adb8ba1350dea837b089
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The sample 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 concatenates strings to form URLs, which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. 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-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
2fdf21f2db447f9be93416b81af1c740576c18d6efe5c8c6f3d215a65c941f1d		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6790 bytes

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