Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c754c6eb071cbcd0…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

15.3 KB First seen: 2022-10-10
MD5: 8d88ed911cc1f48c50875149c48736fc SHA-1: 3bde2a79245ed492e073c0bc108c64efa277de5d SHA-256: c754c6eb071cbcd0b95b15e61cc417227fa510b59690e48523c8c9ea41bb2bf1
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 User Execution T1204.002 Malicious File T1559 Component Object Model Hijacking T1559.001 Component Object Model T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The sample is an RTF document containing an embedded OLE object, specifically identified as related to Equation Editor and CVE-2017-11882. The document body contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable editing', which would activate the OLE object and trigger the exploit. No scripts were extracted, but the presence of the exploit and the lure strongly indicate a malicious intent to execute code.

Heuristics 6

  • 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 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object
  • 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_off00001e62.bin
37bcb379f953f40f050c7a5a3d9cd3a196d6c3e5ecd94540e4dc15ab1452c43b		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x1E62 2227 bytes

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