Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 274f9a100af82d26…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

45.6 KB
MD5: a3531a470b2a9fcf1db75a35fe1f3240 SHA-1: ff0c460e3c57492fd8d181a04ba084a80f75d96a SHA-256: 274f9a100af82d26b43d9e6bb8109fc60cbe5f32cee4b7c20e1039ed537d5d9d
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object that leverages the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The presence of RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR and CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED heuristics strongly indicates exploitation of this known Microsoft Office vulnerability. The extasciitilde{}objupdate directive forces the activation of the embedded object, leading to arbitrary code execution.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • 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 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_off000019fc.bin
290832345045678106945a0954617f5f4bdeb82bbefecf26e0edca080c9a94f1
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x19FC 1532 bytes