Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b3951d633b83ab57…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

124.6 KB First seen: 2023-08-22
MD5: 2f3413191e56d51c92e0b65d6cb70236 SHA-1: 1d7881d0abd787424867629ba2d9b94e4caa3dac SHA-256: b3951d633b83ab57576f4b68837edd8866747f56db5c7b64311d67ad407d9b49
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.005 Visual Basic

The file is an RTF document that contains an embedded OLE object, specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability. The document body provides a lure about financial audits, instructing the user to 'click Enable editing from the yellow bar above', which is a common technique to bypass macro security settings and trigger the exploit. The presence of RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR and RTF_OBJAUTLINK heuristics strongly suggests exploitation of a known vulnerability.

Heuristics 5

  • 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.
  • Automatically linked OLE object high RTF_OBJAUTLINK
    RTF contains \objautlink — an automatically linked OLE object surface that can be updated or activated when Word opens the document.
  • \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 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000271c.bin
22acdf6306ddc0be309a4966a9b6aa7b7cf503d7207ec16f7d383b5f5eaa08d9
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x271C 1884 bytes