Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3b505f559a8898ca…

MALICIOUS

RTF

33.4 KB First seen: 2023-07-04
MD5: 564bde462391879098bfb71072ae2398 SHA-1: 5e7dda6377c32dc89c8921810ed137212a81c24f SHA-256: 3b505f559a8898cad2b847c4ec9c5df87b4ddf57feba87636ccaeb0b77a02787
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.005 PowerShell

The sample is an RTF document containing OLE object data and specifically targets the Equation Editor vulnerability. The presence of \objupdate indicates an attempt to automatically activate the embedded object upon opening. The document body contains a lure to 'Enable editing', suggesting it's designed to trick users into allowing the exploit to run. The primary attack vector is likely exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 via the embedded Equation Editor object, leading to arbitrary code execution.

Heuristics 4

  • 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 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00004201.bin
d7963799c7a766d447c0c933dfb55549a46040e17c1eb2b46692c5165da6ab7e
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x4201 1816 bytes