Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d04bf8b1677e02ad…

MALICIOUS

RTF

14.1 KB First seen: 2022-11-29
MD5: f2de9aa2a7a3c9890d2f799adc95c35b SHA-1: 404dabf3e31da0bbf666df6397f803983961794f SHA-256: d04bf8b1677e02ada795c9a0e84abfca0ba2c1565736e9f34115783af32be764
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The RTF file contains an embedded OLE object that exploits CVE-2017-11882, a known vulnerability in Microsoft Equation Editor. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an Equation Editor object and its activation, which is a common method for delivering malicious payloads. The specific ProgID 'EquAtIOn.3' is also identified.

Heuristics 5

  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00001d22.bin
e28fa7b9a611f7f7e6eef62e4d2339ce6b38ce6a1c5c921141be657c2ad281b3
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x1D22 2003 bytes