Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 76411f78233c4a3b…

MALICIOUS

RTF

255.6 KB Authoring application: Riched20 6.3.9600 First seen: 2021-06-17
MD5: c9869065d402c77e9e1e45f4a04c3e12 SHA-1: c3e6be5ad109a8e24644ca388568151834dc9697 SHA-256: 76411f78233c4a3bfb9189cfcb9cdde59eefcc8bec028769a1a13149c61eddce
240 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF file contains an embedded OLE object specifically identified as an Equation Editor object, triggering critical heuristics related to Equation Editor exploitation. This strongly suggests the file is designed to exploit CVE-2018-0802, a known vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor, to achieve arbitrary code execution. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature as Rtf.Exploit.CVE_2018_0802-6624871-1.

Heuristics 6

  • ClamAV: Rtf.Exploit.CVE_2018_0802-6624871-1 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Rtf.Exploit.CVE_2018_0802-6624871-1
  • Equation Editor object class critical RTF_OBJCLASS_EQUATION
    Object class 'equation.3' references Equation Editor
  • Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object high RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF references Equation.3 ProgID alongside \objdata — likely Equation Editor (CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 / CVE-2018-0798) but without the binary CLSID payload, so flagged at HIGH instead of CRITICAL.
  • \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
  • 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_off00000100.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x100 16941 bytes
SHA-256: b39b96c771855538410d16b2d5a4565e0388d231ab6ba6f124469d8d586f8b39