Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 dde049f4dcc839ba…

MALICIOUS

RTF

42.7 KB First seen: 2023-07-10
MD5: 70e05259e807ed0a8bb8848a6247223e SHA-1: 97b2a27317339301e0a44241311cf2ee2aac2c56 SHA-256: dde049f4dcc839ba3db45edc58d80e860ae4375f8669d662ffd54a2dd8881d82
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1059.005 Visual Basic

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object, specifically targeting the Equation Editor vulnerability (RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR). The document body includes a lure instructing the user to 'Enable editing', which is a common technique to bypass macro security settings. The presence of ".objupdate" further suggests an attempt to automatically activate the embedded object, likely to trigger the exploit and download a secondary payload.

Heuristics 5

  • 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_off00005b42.bin
7a8687cb9f9a9f11c44e9903e71ad779085cf38c7c56be8ebb960abe6e0db48a
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x5B42 1642 bytes