Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a96a8e85a7635a0f…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

2.14 MB
MD5: 2cc20247f6ebce280a98c53d28b5fae5 SHA-1: 8e922b825ec13b57a8a9efbef7f0a2fcb233bf54 SHA-256: a96a8e85a7635a0fd5a988375a5ab2136a0a6c4bb84357b2a2673f9c3516f4cd
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The RTF document contains embedded OLE objects, specifically triggering the critical RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR heuristic. This indicates exploitation of CVE-2017-11882, a known vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor, which allows for arbitrary code execution. The presence of ".objupdate" further suggests that the embedded object is designed to be activated automatically, leading to the execution of a malicious payload.

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_off000011e1.bin
cb4dd3072b0b9701f8c67729a55c1ab81bc98793aa1db4a175623f757d9f6395		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x11E1 28741 bytes
objdata_01_off0001959d.bin
c871b0ddd22fecfdd6e974f8c3ec280f048875d55c366cef5086c24bb2763af3		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x1959D 546134 bytes

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