Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8dead61d3783e37e…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

824.7 KB Created: 2019-12-20 17:39:00
MD5: a68f53e59383050cf5c0f92ac964dfb1 SHA-1: 43a1afe645d5f828b991785f2f9e8e9833063ed3 SHA-256: 8dead61d3783e37eef1dc2062acd13670f59da4f0dab124d533dd4d684b3ed60
160 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The RTF document contains multiple embedded OLE objects, with one specifically triggering activation via \objupdate. The critical heuristic firing indicates exploitation of CVE-2017-8759, a vulnerability in MSXML SAX OLE activation, which likely leads to the execution of a malicious payload. The presence of an embedded OLE object and the exploitation of a known vulnerability strongly suggest a malicious document designed for exploitation.

Heuristics 5

  • CVE-2017-8759 — MSXML SAX OLE activation critical CVE likely CVE_2017_8759
    RTF contains a hex-encoded OLE1 object for Msxml2.SAXXMLReader.6.0 followed by an embedded OLE compound document, and the document requests OLE activation. This matches the RTF staging shape used for CVE-2017-8759 SOAP/WSDL parser code injection.
  • \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 3 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object
  • OlePres presentation stream in RTF OLE object medium RTF_OLEPRES_STREAM
    RTF contains an embedded OLE object with an OlePres presentation stream. OlePres is an OLE presentation marker and is not enough on its own to identify CVE-2025-21298.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00003138.bin
0e860ebab148d157004a1b56c393b66f58d74a2d3b74be23cf48cd5d39762807
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x3138 127534 bytes