Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8665f6a45c854ced…

MALICIOUS

RTF

1.89 MB First seen: 2023-09-04
MD5: a4d3291103f74df46071ca5b59dedcba SHA-1: 80f44d0a54b27083cb1a04833ca4cba7bef6c674 SHA-256: 8665f6a45c854ced8ace2fb65bccf8b9a60479fa4025dc5bbf810095c1adbdfd
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF document contains an OLE object with decoded Equation Editor payload, strongly indicating exploitation of CVE-2017-11882. The presence of a large, high-entropy embedded artifact within the OLE object suggests it is a packed or encrypted second-stage payload. The document body contains only a numeric string, providing no further context for the lure.

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 ~1982KB 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
e08f78d05f973c363803aa90eea533fc32b08ba60ee66a8ee452cf5b93596bce
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x8C 991420 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.