Emotet — Office (OLE) malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 eac7da9fde8d3e5c…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE)

153.2 KB Created: 2020-09-15 09:11:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: f8885c62394a89523ca5f99e203c4e34 SHA-1: 6b5a5d4c5efa04fd155adf219a52388fe623ad89 SHA-256: eac7da9fde8d3e5c22c228f75477007b3bfe8422575a73a92a39d995c063d121
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information

The file contains obfuscated VBA macros that trigger a PowerShell stager. This stager is designed to decode and execute a second-stage payload, as indicated by the critical heuristic firings for OLE_USERFORM_OBFUSCATED_POWERSHELL and OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature, identifying it as Doc.Dropper.Emotet-9761056-0. The primary attack pattern involves leveraging macros to download and run further malicious code.

Heuristics 8

  • Hidden UserForm PowerShell EncodedCommand stager critical OLE_USERFORM_OBFUSCATED_POWERSHELL
    OLE document contains a UTF-16LE form/property string with an obfuscated PowerShell -EncodedCommand payload. The observed macro family reconstructs this hidden string with Split/Join or UserForm property reads and launches it through WMI/COM process creation. This is downloader malware, not an Office CVE exploit.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Dropper.Emotet-9761056-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Dropper.Emotet-9761056-0
  • Document_Open macro high OLE_VBA_DOCOPEN
    Document_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • 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 macros detected medium OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains VBA macro code
  • 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.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
b4e7e6a496a33a5d51b25c403e1165bdc88602f70d8eedc62b6d635ba4d9d28a
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 22614 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.