Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLSX malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fc500502f2b5ef5b…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLSX

121.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:17:20 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel
MD5: 57fd3be2b7ef176d75f60d2ace3d717a SHA-1: e7e6c6e0929f107c18f55d83ae08f91e6469040f SHA-256: fc500502f2b5ef5be3fc54b27c08e58c643c8f054bb6e9fc2639f4aafae73cf9
280 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1059.001 PowerShell T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

The file contains a Workbook_Open VBA macro that is triggered automatically when the spreadsheet is opened. This macro uses CreateObject to interact with Wscript.Shell, indicating an attempt to execute commands or scripts. The macro's logic suggests it displays a deceptive message box to the user before proceeding. The embedded script also contains a long, obfuscated string that reconstructs multiple URLs, likely intended for downloading a second-stage payload. The ClamAV detection as 'Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ab81c42b2bd4747e-9951196-0' strongly suggests the Emotet family, known for its downloader capabilities.

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.

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