Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 afdcd178f844a9fd…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.05 MB First seen: 2022-11-30
MD5: 3c90da5a6ec723afbccdeec2401ae956 SHA-1: c2281e3c065992bbb6c6a49fc94021ccc997e2ca SHA-256: afdcd178f844a9fd1f101ef39ee24aae6e782de2aec9d688ca9f3f047efe18f7
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF document contains an OLE object with decoded Equation Editor payload, strongly indicating exploitation of CVE-2017-11882. The presence of a PE file within the OLE object suggests it acts as a dropper for a secondary malicious payload. The excessive hex data and OLE object further support the malicious intent.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • \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 ~1099KB 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_off0000006c.bin
aa6b954b2eb960eb402052f22e557eb1f8553cf4918225085cf33eea4aeb6cdb
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x6C 550169 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 8.00, consistent with packed or encrypted content.