Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f9a9b01d460cf2e4…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

216.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-11-02
MD5: daa47bb2a74acfe1b7d9a06c6a3e99f7 SHA-1: a84fda5f55cf323156d5d9dae14328ca92c49a6c SHA-256: f9a9b01d460cf2e4ff970a3d7e9b0f7c4be4d5d209aac07d186eb75a84bafb0b
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The critical heuristics indicate the presence of Excel 4.0 macros with an Auto_Open entry point, specifically calling dangerous functions like RUN. ClamAV identifies this as Emotet, a known downloader family. The macro sheet likely contains code to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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
9769df32b31dca739db0ef5d2698aee07ce71addcfc3c157c359d4c3e51dbff9		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 8159 bytes

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