Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fa4c3a3d26a8004d…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: a9dc26e5f18abf52411a922c89dbaa8c SHA-1: 0113fb3b2a2207141c28221165f8bc5b98759f16 SHA-256: fa4c3a3d26a8004ddc0b297ddc23895674d973a1299c9f5b44122265e2336721
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.003 Windows Command Shell T1204.002 Malicious File T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The sample contains a critical ClamAV detection for Emotet, and multiple high-severity heuristics indicate the presence of VBA macros designed to execute automatically upon opening the workbook. The Workbook_Open macro initiates a chain of MsgBox prompts, and the embedded script attempts to download and execute a payload from a list of URLs. The script also constructs a command line that includes a Base64 encoded string, which decodes to a list of URLs for downloading the next stage. The presence of `wscript.exe` references and the construction of a `.bat` file in `c:\programdata\` further suggest a downloader pattern.

Heuristics 7

  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0
  • Reference to Windows Script Host high SC_STR_WSCRIPT
    Reference to Windows Script Host
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
faf50200d5a9adeeda00cc1da1bbf8f6abf0317a1e97a58db8ae804ba12ba446
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 13985 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved macro source contains an auto-exec entry point and execution/download terms.