Emotet — Office (OOXML) / .DOC malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e8519e1548fee8c3…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .DOC

88.0 KB Created: 2021-12-08 18:15:00 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word 16.0000
MD5: 1f5bdca06f2444488e8899bdbc159831 SHA-1: 1217ddec0886fb76bd0ab35c67ae8da217896144 SHA-256: e8519e1548fee8c35bac50eb473ce75738bbe6273baa63ed60c17602fb23873d
202 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is identified as malicious by ClamAV with a signature indicating it's a downloader for Emotet. The presence of an AutoOpen macro, a CreateObject call, and the extracted VBA script strongly suggest malicious intent. The script reconstructs the string 'powershell.exe' and uses it to execute a command, likely to download and run a second-stage payload. The obfuscated document body and the use of `StrReverse` in the VBA script further support this. The `CreateObject` call in the VBA script is used to execute `c:\windows\explorer ` followed by the reversed keywords, which is a common Emotet technique.

Heuristics 6

  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.EmotetUpdate122100-9914334-1 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.EmotetUpdate122100-9914334-1
  • AutoOpen macro high OLE_VBA_AUTOOPEN
    AutoOpen macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • VBA project inside OOXML medium OOXML_VBA
    Document contains vbaProject.bin — VBA macros present
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingCanvas
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/drawing/2014/chartex
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingDrawing
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing
    • http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordml
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2012/wordml
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2015/wordml/symex
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingGroup
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingInk
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2006/wordml
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingShape

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
446de911192ce6c25ce4bd5ae51b56b73f1b91e83cb9f41cc004c7c587af3a58
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 978 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.
vbaProject_00.bin
7fcf6042099974efcce9ccb0c30bb4b0315a9924479bd7c4cb571ba39cc68e04
vba-project OOXML VBA project: word/vbaProject.bin 14336 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.