Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 faaf729d46f80cce…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 2998da1514e29f2b85c1399be696ccf3 SHA-1: c245bdf8e9f66d79fdc421e119c525170f8ae050 SHA-256: faaf729d46f80ccecd969e84ee63d8f776dcbe212adf27e981aaedecd685a1df
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 file contains a Workbook_Open VBA macro that executes Windows Script Host and attempts to create a shell object. The macro also constructs a batch file at 'c:\programdata\uidpjewl.bat' which contains a long, obfuscated command line. This command line appears to download payloads from multiple URLs, including 'http://youlanda.org/eln-image/n8DPZISf/', and then execute them. The presence of the 'CreateObject' call and the Workbook_Open auto-execution strongly suggest a downloader functionality, consistent with the Emotet family. The reconstructed command line also includes a registry key write for persistence: 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\IAccessible2Proxy'.

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.