Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d2bad6ede38d5fea…

MALICIOUS

RTF

37.8 KB First seen: 2023-02-11
MD5: 0ab80d4e0c9e2d9f5106c01f25764b8c SHA-1: cc47f32207cd59b0266695c02194bbde9e302f45 SHA-256: d2bad6ede38d5feab7908d28605e7a83643bb3eadb218e7d844b5b4a26552ccc
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 User Execution: Malicious File T1059.005 PowerShell

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882). The presence of RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR and CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED heuristics strongly indicates exploitation of this known vulnerability. The document also contains a lure instructing the user to 'Enable editing', a common tactic to bypass security measures and facilitate the execution of the embedded malicious object.

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.
  • 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_off00005824.bin
c3b1c7edf89fbd492330754b2e0cd4aeb7995e3ef299a150ea3c2bd59e518be3		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x5824 1540 bytes

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