Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ab025abd662f487d…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.60 MB First seen: 2022-05-12
MD5: 17eab27a4dccef0ce3f3895dc65d87d6 SHA-1: 8537b9b54cbeb73e1f2d3b3abc3ad4acc4ee124d SHA-256: ab025abd662f487d3ca9b9f67b1430494fdec2d792d39ce21e8d524037d3c6a6
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The file is an RTF document containing an embedded OLE object that exploits the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The heuristics indicate the presence of an Equation Editor ProgID and OLE object activation, strongly suggesting this exploit. The embedded object likely contains and executes a malicious script, although the script content is truncated in the provided evidence. The primary attack vector is likely spearphishing, with the document designed to trigger the exploit upon opening.

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_off000012b8.bin
cee18f387774d9ec5cbe30592b057ea816622a91283a0f378fafc9fa8862c2a2		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x12B8 86816 bytes
objdata_01_off00037274.bin
c6836530895d3068b0bd13b6673e20cfb3c2472da47cd4c3fb2419898144731b		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x37274 345132 bytes

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