Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7cce5db31a9df4d1…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

14.0 KB First seen: 2022-08-16
MD5: 97e7ecd81f892db66f66783fcbee622d SHA-1: fd4793143403164f3748c0732ce03369f3430186 SHA-256: 7cce5db31a9df4d125d3e2a80223294dbc88621d5d0a09481ac1f46cc3e95fcf
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing via Service T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic

The sample is an RTF document that contains embedded OLE objects, specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'enable editing to open in readable format', which is a common technique to bypass macro security settings and trigger the exploit. The presence of the Equation Editor ProgID 'eQUAtion.3' is a strong indicator of this specific exploit.

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.
  • \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
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object
  • 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.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00001cb8.bin
54ed33e3887144671f95f4ceb6dd723d6c141086626713d8a21f025573c1572c		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x1CB8 1815 bytes

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