Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ef2ce641a4e9f270…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

216.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-11-02
MD5: 2486374800299563ab8934122234242a SHA-1: 47bfe94aa96ef43231890f04ccd286b0888e10c8 SHA-256: ef2ce641a4e9f270eea626e8e4800b0b97b4a436c40e7af30aeb6f02566b809c
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Service Execution: Service Execution T1059.001 PowerShell: PowerShell

The sample is an Excel 4.0 spreadsheet containing an Auto_Open macro, a known technique for executing malicious code. ClamAV detection identifies it as Emotet, a downloader family. The macro likely executes a second-stage payload, although the specific commands are obfuscated within the XLM macro.

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-b649c93692b4c9d9-9976616-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-b649c93692b4c9d9-9976616-0
  • 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
106723e9d4e5e8742cadd8ab3b3c276df9e04e9f026271b79b7247eae7a376b2		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8150 bytes

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