Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cb283b9b9a95d172…

MALICIOUS

RTF

3.1 KB First seen: 2025-09-19
MD5: 7773e495198ddcd00b801186e4d18d0e SHA-1: 15fa6576f5bc65c77be5820426067d59c9bdd9dc SHA-256: cb283b9b9a95d17298e0e996ecf5006629a70e926d406280540691f33e7ea7e8
120 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The RTF file contains embedded OLE object data and specifically targets the Equation Editor, indicated by the RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR heuristic. The ".\objupdate" directive forces the OLE object to activate, triggering the exploit. The presence of OLE object data and the Equation Editor exploit strongly suggests an attempt to execute arbitrary code, likely for downloading and running a secondary payload. The specific ProgID 'Equation.3' is identified.

Heuristics 3

  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off0000003b.bin
965e210a66a44c3c9b3d454120557d7bdcb53ea6e63839266e108fc0ffb852e0		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x3B 1539 bytes

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