Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ceedbb2fadd24d26…

MALICIOUS

RTF

3.49 MB Created: 2024-04-03 08:46:00 First seen: 2025-07-01
MD5: a664039ba8058c499bcb9c81aa355fb8 SHA-1: affdfb78e3f7afcfbfadbc051709108cb1ecd3f9 SHA-256: ceedbb2fadd24d267e8029173cdffa7dae8c3fc36571ce8a51da676f8501d938
342 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information

The RTF file contains multiple indicators of malicious activity, most critically the CVE-2017-11882 exploit targeting the Equation Editor. This exploit is known to embed OLE objects that, when activated, can lead to arbitrary code execution. The presence of large hex-encoded data blocks and PE headers within the OLE object further suggests the embedding of a secondary payload. No document body text was available for analysis, but the technical indicators strongly point to a classic exploit delivery mechanism.

Heuristics 9

  • CVE-2017-11882 — Equation Editor FONT record overflow critical CVE likely CVE_2017_11882
    Equation Editor MTEF contains an overlong FONT typeface field, the vulnerable copy primitive for CVE-2017-11882. This is stronger evidence than the Equation Editor CLSID alone because it identifies the malformed record that drives code execution in EQNEDT32.EXE.
  • Composite Moniker in RTF OLE object high CVE related RTF_COMPOSITE_MONIKER_RELATED
    RTF contains Composite Moniker CLSID in OLE object context, but no nearby scriptlet/SCT payload was confirmed. Treat as related moniker attack-surface evidence rather than proof of CVE-2017-8570 exploitation.
  • 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.
  • PE header (with DOS stub) in hex data critical RTF_MZ_HEX
    Hex-encoded PE (MZ + DOS stub) found inside RTF — likely an embedded executable payload
  • \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 ~1455KB of hex-encoded data inside \objdata sections — may hide a payload
  • OLE object data medium RTF_OBJDATA
    RTF contains 2 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://www.pdf-tools.com\
    • http://ocsp.verisign.com0
    • http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/wordml
    • http://www.adobe.com/go/security-and-compliance
    • https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/
    • http://www.pdf-tools.com
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceEvent#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • https://www.verisign.com/rpa
    • http://csc3-2010-crl.verisign.com/CSC3-2010.crl0D
    • https://www.verisign.com/rpa0
    • http://csc3-2010-aia.verisign.com/CSC3-2010.cer0
    • https://www.verisign.com/cps0*
    • http://logo.verisign.com/vslogo.gif04
    • http://crl.verisign.com/pca3-g5.crl04
    • https://www.globalsign.com/repository/0
    • http://ocsp.globalsign.com/ca/gstsacasha384g40C
    • http://secure.globalsign.com/cacert/gstsacasha384g4.crt0
    • http://crl.globalsign.com/ca/gstsacasha384g4.crl0
    • http://ocsp2.globalsign.com/rootr606
    • http://crl.globalsign.com/root-r6.crl0G

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00003a12.bin
1675c152405de853179580455eb63fe6a2af9eea7cc12f944d2f0e8dba849f86		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x3A12 740586 bytes
objdata_01_off00178c18.bin
72bd76599c17052cc34443573f8b849d1967d3263c0e0f0118bc6c097634a998		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x178C18 584266 bytes

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