Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3b457aca769a1101…

MALICIOUS

RTF

1.58 MB First seen: 2023-09-11
MD5: 0c854aa42124ec3e25f4bb79f9b56ffb SHA-1: 11404ae25fc83668330031809510a7be93f1ea12 SHA-256: 3b457aca769a1101b0cb8224c02cda21f27dd7d0f72baab01ecf30b67f5733c6
222 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). This vulnerability is known to be used to execute arbitrary code, typically to download and run a second-stage payload. The presence of a large, high-entropy OLE object strongly indicates the exploitation of this known vulnerability.

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 ~1652KB 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_off0000008c.bin
a02ace484f2489b01aad69ef936a813eb9a5bf9b67aaf30c4670c1b760a4ec94
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x8C 826415 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.