Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8cfdcb7586a064eb…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.68 MB First seen: 2023-02-01
MD5: dc4f787a69d7754228d326dc59931763 SHA-1: fb25df53baaf9d835cdc9a849ef21796e76c2062 SHA-256: 8cfdcb7586a064eb55acf04fe0c02500c5c563e8799a82093001c71e464b06c5
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The RTF document contains an OLE object that exploits the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability is known to be used for delivering second-stage payloads. The presence of a decoded PE file within the OLE object strongly indicates that the RTF is a dropper for malicious executable content.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • Automatically linked OLE object high RTF_OBJAUTLINK
    RTF contains \objautlink — an automatically linked OLE object surface that can be updated or activated when Word opens the document.
  • \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 ~1647KB 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_off00000081.bin
1c9b3378219c880fc45d97d53b1b7ac0a82bfafbaa0d0b81205312a42767d900
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x81 836584 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.