Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4aa3e8efd1e85628…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

21.4 KB
MD5: 99c53ff09a4670777a18d236dbdcb2d4 SHA-1: c7e9befe7e5ce82d8d15aa15943c42e19ec5f24b SHA-256: 4aa3e8efd1e85628ca6621c1eba895abaef9db0c713f007af97a8d70a0f76741
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The RTF file contains embedded OLE object data and specifically triggers the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability related to Equation Editor activation. This indicates a pattern of exploiting known vulnerabilities for initial execution. No scripts were extracted, and the document body was unreadable, but the critical heuristic firings strongly suggest exploitation for 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_off0000178f.bin
ba90e4a4b8e896259b706137bcaf3803b5a985fd71ce8f79871efe674c654143
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x178F 2058 bytes