Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 88a3c56e5c4b20bc…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

13.3 KB
MD5: 26df71e994159f78e663b090ef1b96c0 SHA-1: b308debf37a336dd8ebd261f5214ad090fddcbf1 SHA-256: 88a3c56e5c4b20bcd3bfb478044de30a13af66dcc5371c71d0152f2ab6d81363
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The RTF file contains embedded OLE object data, specifically triggering the Equation Editor component. Heuristics indicate a critical finding related to RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR and CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED, suggesting exploitation of this known vulnerability for code execution. The presence of ".objupdate" further confirms that the embedded object is intended to be activated, likely leading to the execution of a malicious payload.

Heuristics 5

  • Obfuscated Equation Editor ProgID + activation critical CVE related RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF decodes to an Equation.3 ProgID from top-level \objdata hex after nested RTF junk groups are ignored, and the document also contains \objemb plus \objupdate activation. This is an obfuscated Equation Editor exploit surface associated with CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 families, but no exact malformed MTEF CVE primitive was recovered from this object.
  • 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.
  • \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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00001959.bin
10b5b9ba65b40a639429d7c429f3aeeffd4825bd9a71dc98b7e19b9cfee206a9		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x1959 1745 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.