Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9488f75f144eef96…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.96 MB First seen: 2022-03-08
MD5: 8ee31f99d6710b5a3ab97b59b21b8a75 SHA-1: 49ec82df61f7927a73fa1f3498f73115858e8d26 SHA-256: 9488f75f144eef9651f3f8bc1b3d1f102492adebac638c85137bf98db3a341dd
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an RTF document containing embedded OLE objects, specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The heuristics indicate the presence of an Equation Editor ProgID and OLE object activation, strongly suggesting exploitation of this known vulnerability. The embedded object data, when decoded, likely contains the malicious payload or script responsible for further execution. The attack pattern is consistent with delivering a malicious payload through a vulnerable component within a document.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • Split hex Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object critical RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF embeds the Equation.3 ProgID as hex bytes near OLE object activation and splits the byte stream with whitespace or an ignorable RTF group. This is an Equation Editor OLE activation surface commonly used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 exploit documents.
  • \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 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off000012c5.bin
dccf92d52440638df77db47d3431ccefd7cd79c21c50e77267ef1afb20a98444		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x12C5 27032 bytes
objdata_01_off00019f7e.bin
fd387bf73715ad3ddffb484923b15f1a6a20c79bd947b60b91bae40d9d4fb788		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x19F7E 462937 bytes

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