Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 23d268075dfda982…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

10.8 KB
MD5: 5698e96ffcc5607c78e5708bac591ef2 SHA-1: 561d11dede19bc4be7e73c61e0346e6aad2551c8 SHA-256: 23d268075dfda982951085f1cc40e7c771ea91432f25a021341d481461b38f8d
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF document contains embedded OLE object data, specifically related to Equation Editor. Heuristics indicate a critical firing for RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR and high firings for CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED and RTF_OBJUPDATE, strongly suggesting exploitation of the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability allows for arbitrary code execution when the embedded object is activated, likely leading to the download and execution of a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 5

  • Obfuscated Equation Editor ProgID + activation critical CVE related RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF decodes to an Equation.3 ProgID from top-level \objdata hex after nested RTF junk groups are ignored, and the document also contains \objemb plus \objupdate activation. This is an obfuscated Equation Editor exploit surface associated with CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 families, but no exact malformed MTEF CVE primitive was recovered from this object.
  • 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 2 \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_off0000060a.bin
a265021b76c6c939692bce1d7d273f59ed90f4e4f0b99766d12f012bab8de353		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x60A 1573 bytes

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