Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 01aca53f2fb8a5d9…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

31.9 KB First seen: 2022-12-07
MD5: e633bcbdcf4a9dbaf3384e37dfb9d250 SHA-1: ea076ed77d3cfd623a86ddfc19993d3c107243eb SHA-256: 01aca53f2fb8a5d9eb781589543e9c4f1a34b7c8de67b0c5986be20715c85579
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1059.005 Visual Basic

The sample is an RTF document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically leveraging the Equation Editor vulnerability. The presence of \objupdate indicates an attempt to force activation of this object upon opening. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable editing', which is a common tactic to bypass security measures and trigger the exploit.

Heuristics 4

  • Split hex Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object critical 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.
  • \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
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00005b4c.bin
19c3fd24f5a9d6ee1ccdd9df571ebafa56f6c23e6832bfb2a2623a0515a1a862
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x5B4C 1701 bytes