Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 84db06fbae4df757…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.62 MB First seen: 2023-03-06
MD5: d9a93d70d5cfff940c11ab15778f3378 SHA-1: 6af96ed44a64a15373c23fdff700224e33cb8c1e SHA-256: 84db06fbae4df757d09031d589b816ebcdf2d6dd48fa3d7498378baf5326f4b9
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object with high entropy, strongly indicating a hidden payload. Critical heuristics confirm the presence of a decoded Equation Editor payload and link it to CVE-2017-11882. The ".objupdate" directive suggests that the OLE object is designed to be activated automatically, leading to the execution of the embedded malicious code.

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 ~1698KB 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_off00000078.bin
cc47a9ecf8d3c38a92affefea494ff0a86f5bd729bab95ef9cc6eef1266f5b5c
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x78 849570 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.