Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 56ce55de28623ce6…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

3.8 KB First seen: 2022-03-18
MD5: 229b3d66c45ca9c7fa9511093b20bb8a SHA-1: 63c9abd95d814fd883a92dc978796d24c0c504d7 SHA-256: 56ce55de28623ce6fab0d421ba87fadbbef1d31e05b2fcdcea0129f96193518c
121 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1559.002 Component Object Model Hijacking

The RTF document contains OLE object data and specifically triggers the Equation Editor vulnerability. The \objupdate directive forces the embedded OLE object, likely containing a malicious payload, to activate upon opening. This indicates an attempt to exploit the Equation Editor component for arbitrary code execution.

Heuristics 3

  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000009c.bin
fa1f6c7460e99bc314250e9c04159d5b0e75c64120583fb53c99ce1f088e8a95
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x9C 1659 bytes