Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b0f53efe358097e1…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.14 MB First seen: 2023-02-20
MD5: fd1ec13bebe2648351ed8c746d2737d7 SHA-1: 742efa81f30d84e4ecc69d35c97d58bb280dc012 SHA-256: b0f53efe358097e176572ed51bcbc204edcf3849c64a6e5610caedf7bfb6fde5
222 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The RTF document contains OLE object data, specifically leveraging the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). This vulnerability is used to decode and embed a Portable Executable (PE) file, which is likely the primary payload. The presence of ".objdata" and ".objupdate" sections, along with high entropy in the decoded object, strongly indicates the embedding of a malicious executable.

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 ~1197KB 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_off0000007f.bin
525db8cb2de3508f727feb8dbabf7b7edde70e2b76a43bf4cf7e45122a1ebf83
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x7F 598685 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.