Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 28d683aaa60af7e7…

MALICIOUS

RTF

1.79 MB First seen: 2021-07-13
MD5: ea4c8e1ac09113ed9366f24862ba9cfe SHA-1: b96e5ba5d8700572b48d75002341490e11d1e0e5 SHA-256: 28d683aaa60af7e7b8d25b0906039a74c2de39e48ecfe2973076c78d5d882568
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF file contains multiple indicators of malicious activity, including OLE object data and specific heuristics pointing to the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability is known to be exploited for client execution, likely to deliver a secondary payload. The presence of decoded object data further supports the exploitation of this known vulnerability.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high 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.
  • 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 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off000011e1.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x11E1 61466 bytes
SHA-256: 27eb5c503cca66d0c758d9069e355bd60e64baf3ddaf40008b2d0ce4bf01b22b
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis recovered command string(s): WScript.ScriptName, WScript.Quit(), Cmd = strActivationID(""" ypoc c/ dmc") & sKeys & WScript.ScriptName & """ """ & lValue & """ /Y"
objdata_01_off00034cae.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x34CAE 453383 bytes
SHA-256: 4d6664f118eedff717160ab4a66190ef5c19c482cce6369b56962aafb643a777