RTF / .DOC malware analysis — malicious · 53d7a7e5774bc299

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

84.5 KB First seen: 2023-01-18

MD5: 214a5018ca69057d61ee15f5ca7b3114 SHA-1: 950e0046e744400d96ef7761358e85eb6c6fed17 SHA-256: 53d7a7e5774bc299d1d70b8764750f34faa344344b80a7b05db220d2e02796ed

220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK

T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The file is an RTF document containing embedded OLE object data, specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The presence of RTF_OBJAUTLINK and RTF_OBJUPDATE heuristics indicates that the embedded object is designed to be automatically activated upon opening the document. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable editing', a common tactic to bypass security measures and trigger the exploit. The exploit is likely used to download and execute a secondary payload.

Heuristics 6

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.
Automatically linked OLE object high RTF_OBJAUTLINK

RTF contains \objautlink — an automatically linked OLE object surface that can be updated or activated when Word opens the document.
\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.

Filename	Kind	Source	Size
`objdata_00_off00004ac1.bin` `8e54d8e71913e9c317e9661187fd9674103731e08c10a5930dda15df518a2bc6`	rtf-objdata-decoded	RTF \objdata at offset 0x4AC1	1380 bytes

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