Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 106e72688e09390d…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.28 MB First seen: 2023-08-29
MD5: 761ee0c7af00d971287522de6798eff9 SHA-1: a6c59e88e055fa0bf88a287dd9c72a59be4a0de5 SHA-256: 106e72688e09390d9938132ed5c00abdd86a12794ea143f0a533fc900f45eef4
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The RTF document contains OLE object data, specifically leveraging the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability is used to decode and embed a Portable Executable (PE) file, which is likely the primary payload. The presence of ".objupdate" further suggests an attempt to force the activation of the embedded OLE object, leading to the execution of the malicious code.

Heuristics 6

  • Equation Editor OLE1 native payload — CVE-2017-11882 related critical CVE related CVE_2017_11882_RELATED
    RTF decodes to an OLE1 Equation.3 embedded object whose native data is large and payload-like, and \objupdate requests automatic activation. This is the delivery shape used by Equation Editor RCE documents such as CVE-2017-11882/CVE-2018-0802, but the malformed MTEF record needed for exact attribution was not recovered.
  • Decoded Equation Editor payload + PE critical RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF decodes to an Equation Editor ProgID adjacent to OLE activation and the same decoded object stream contains embedded PE bytes. This matches the Equation Editor exploit surface used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 documents, while requiring payload evidence to avoid flagging benign Equation references.
  • \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.
  • Large hex data blocks in OLE object high RTF_EXCESSIVE_HEX
    RTF contains ~1338KB of hex-encoded data inside \objdata sections — may hide a payload
  • OLE object data medium RTF_OBJDATA
    RTF contains 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000008f.bin
8e69c81a43b6338066b743f5cf4317e9f4499e66b575838878bfa768201f6475
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x8F 669200 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.