Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e046aa5afab6991b…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

3.6 KB
MD5: ecab98438f6646a9287aef932fa10eb6 SHA-1: 0ea8ea9924f6a7c3d9fcb84fe42c920d2bcdfb97 SHA-256: e046aa5afab6991b4ebac87beffc207285abbc07e768a332220aac31b7adada4
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The RTF document contains embedded OLE object data, specifically triggering the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability related to Equation Editor activation. This exploit allows for arbitrary code execution upon opening the document. No scripts were extracted, but the presence of the Equation Editor exploit is a strong indicator of malicious intent.

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 2 \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_off000000ab.bin
8107b84622b191a5db2186b474d4ac56e1bfbfb1750a1b24f24146c56bfc5171
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0xAB 1548 bytes