Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 76497989dc232214…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.60 MB First seen: 2023-09-04
MD5: 955a90c5cd5f65a5002b22a292c95fad SHA-1: 1fc070ed15180ec17449ead0de6a6cabc390a1ac SHA-256: 76497989dc232214a37764a526e4e5b0e74a814d10179e0961a8736e9adb2732
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The RTF document contains an OLE object specifically related to Equation Editor, indicating exploitation of CVE-2017-11882. The object data is heavily obfuscated with high entropy and contains a PE file, suggesting it's a loader for a secondary payload. The presence of ".objupdate" further confirms the intent to activate the embedded object.

Heuristics 6

  • Equation Editor OLE1 native payload — CVE-2017-11882 related critical CVE related CVE_2017_11882_RELATED
    RTF decodes to an OLE1 Equation.3 embedded object whose native data is large and payload-like, and \objupdate requests automatic activation. This is the delivery shape used by Equation Editor RCE documents such as CVE-2017-11882/CVE-2018-0802, but the malformed MTEF record needed for exact attribution was not recovered.
  • Decoded Equation Editor payload + PE critical RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF decodes to an Equation Editor ProgID adjacent to OLE activation and the same decoded object stream contains embedded PE bytes. This matches the Equation Editor exploit surface used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 documents, while requiring payload evidence to avoid flagging benign Equation references.
  • \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.
  • Large hex data blocks in OLE object high RTF_EXCESSIVE_HEX
    RTF contains ~1674KB of hex-encoded data inside \objdata sections — may hide a payload
  • OLE object data medium RTF_OBJDATA
    RTF contains 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000008c.bin
358b5267aa8d5c50814cb4cc2bddc5acfdbc9b2f75645b7832036596daa4d723
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x8C 837057 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.