Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 73f5b024e7c7242b…

MALICIOUS

RTF

1.79 MB First seen: 2021-07-13
MD5: a54e5d57f8d278f80fbcf3dd8bd7e1ea SHA-1: c4cb0113b8824d8541208a5a7eec124a7a0f32cd SHA-256: 73f5b024e7c7242bf60841b1f9314aba0a71001a2016eb49cbc96ffd49125759
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The RTF file contains multiple indicators of malicious activity, including OLE object data and specific heuristics pointing to the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability is known to be exploited for client execution, likely to deliver a secondary payload. The presence of decoded object data further supports the exploitation of this known vulnerability.

Heuristics 6

  • Split hex Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object critical CVE likely 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.
  • 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.
  • \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.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact high 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.
  • 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 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off000011e1.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x11E1 61481 bytes
SHA-256: e2f0aa96b7ebb14090eb61983c000141c887e5f54b06af2fa6c19aba0b446a23
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Static shellcode analysis recovered command string(s): WScript.ScriptName, WScript.Quit(), Cmd = strActivationID(""" ypoc c/ dmc") & sKeys & WScript.ScriptName & """ """ & lValue & """ /Y"
objdata_01_off00034ccc.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x34CCC 453383 bytes
SHA-256: 4d6664f118eedff717160ab4a66190ef5c19c482cce6369b56962aafb643a777