Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fce233a93e32a155…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

55.5 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-03-25
MD5: 96bf5d33756ac94e4be760b2ecac97e3 SHA-1: 98c8ebbedba8443318ea1b15ba6edd9346ada8a8 SHA-256: fce233a93e32a155dd9f7d4ef11847be3d67b073afb5b518e49c2939e1e6b1f0
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

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

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet that contains an Auto_Open macro. This macro is designed to download and execute a payload from one of the six embedded URLs. The ClamAV detection and the presence of multiple suspicious URLs strongly indicate a downloader, consistent with the Emotet family. The macro reconstructs URLs using string concatenation, such as "h"&"ttp"&"s://www.clintmorey.com/wp-content/QSzbH8Ikl8E/".

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • URL reconstructed from XLM cell array (6 URLs) critical OLE_XLM_CELL_ARRAY_URL
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet stages its payload URL across the BIFF8 Shared String Table (one quoted-char SST entry concatenated with & at runtime) or across individual numeric cells (one ASCII charcode per cell). The reconstructed URL is invisible to literal-bytes URL extraction because it is never contiguous in the workbook stream. URLs were recovered by walking the BIFF8 record stream and decoding SST entries plus LABELSST/RK/NUMBER cells.
  • ClamAV: Doc.Downloader.Emotet03220-9942564-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Doc.Downloader.Emotet03220-9942564-0
  • 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.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://www.clintmorey.com/wp-content/QSzbH8Ikl8E/
    • https://ciberfallas.com/wp-admin/4sU1dATy/
    • http://code786.com/beeldOLD/ATnNk316/
    • http://combatenterprises.com/cgi-bin/1BabmNqCKBxUIzUy/
    • http://sd-1684625-h00001.ferozo.net/PaginaMasVieja1321654/F1M5dBu8axuQkx0p8/
    • https://comarcahoy.com.ar/wp-content/S1nkrxCcDV89DLpTXhqC/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
09766ace40a05da85050d6e9ec7093d6722df7e33a81547c627ee8e0e9dbf1ff		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6951 bytes

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