Emotet — Office (OLE) malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ef0155dfa125f37f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE)

186.6 KB Created: 2020-09-15 11:47:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Office Word
MD5: 4421d0f1239a6b5ffe6166e05458e27f SHA-1: 2a02c39547d3f9b0c657d94403096d7730928ff0 SHA-256: ef0155dfa125f37fe72651907abd58ca621278f4e6af8ed772c2190c0984d6b2
300 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample contains obfuscated VBA macros that trigger on document open. A critical heuristic indicates a UserForm PowerShell encoded command stager. ClamAV detection confirms this is Emotet. The VBA code likely decodes and executes a PowerShell command to download and run a second-stage payload, as suggested by the 'OLE_USERFORM_OBFUSCATED_POWERSHELL' and 'OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC' firings.

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.EmotetWinMob0920-9636503-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Dropper.EmotetWinMob0920-9636503-0
  • 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
b8e07f1a26e378ad66aa45e874b33eb98cd646ec4a53c9d43f1763af1b17616f
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 22982 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.