Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ead922aaa8dc0a56…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

53.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-06-20
MD5: 262ffd0a973be87a2aa4ac12724d7f4d SHA-1: 74e488a6491d71e9dfb9be5c2becb48e4524f225 SHA-256: ead922aaa8dc0a56c49c6f6705e2b45a3ba6af71801e797f739f2b1b607cbd5d
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. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that utilizes dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. The macro concatenates multiple strings to form URLs, which are likely used to download and execute a second-stage payload. The ClamAV detection explicitly names this as 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-aa87d5786a858772-9953435-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-aa87d5786a858772-9953435-0
  • 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
7ab5ef6689937532951c996fe211a2ac046a3dbc546728bfe725212729605929		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6790 bytes

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