Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 00cd258e2838ee22…

MALICIOUS

RTF

3.6 KB First seen: 2019-12-09
MD5: 864000bf5e920fa04d3bfc64c86b097d SHA-1: d1df974c5ae27b34dac3839b4e166dbdf9bfde15 SHA-256: 00cd258e2838ee22a5b3a6793d6396542613eb83e49190eec1931a5080047a90
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object specifically identified as an Equation Editor object, triggering heuristics related to CVE-2017-11882. This exploit is known to allow for arbitrary code execution when activated. The presence of ".objupdate" further indicates an attempt to force OLE activation, confirming the exploit's intent.

Heuristics 5

  • Split hex Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object critical CVE likely RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF embeds the Equation.3 ProgID as hex bytes near OLE object activation and splits the byte stream with whitespace or an ignorable RTF group. This is an Equation Editor OLE activation surface commonly used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 exploit documents.
  • Equation Editor activation — CVE-2017-11882 related high CVE related CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED
    RTF decodes to an Equation.3 ProgID and requests OLE activation with \objemb plus \objupdate. This reaches the legacy Equation Editor attack surface used by CVE-2017-11882/CVE-2018-0802 documents, but the malformed MTEF/native payload needed for stronger attribution was not recovered.
  • \objupdate forces OLE activation high RTF_OBJUPDATE
    RTF contains \objupdate — forces automatic OLE object instantiation when the document is opened, bypassing user interaction. Almost exclusively seen in Equation Editor exploit documents.
  • OLE object data medium RTF_OBJDATA
    RTF contains 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000003b.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x3B 1808 bytes
SHA-256: 9188b8e5d0facac5c7e663008c3a74d08a17dbf15c7784f5df95f52617eab81b

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