Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 e4afb43a13e043d9…

MALICIOUS

RTF

27.2 KB First seen: 2025-05-20
MD5: 71b0774691ab8192af8ed8e816a1f475 SHA-1: 4e96eaa3b96bba0e2c72df4ab045f1c5f816b88d SHA-256: e4afb43a13e043d99ff0fb0a0ac49e96a04932ba37365527914d6be779597edf
220 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1559.001 Component Object Model Hijacking

The RTF document contains multiple indicators of exploitation for CVE-2017-11882, specifically related to the Equation Editor. The presence of `RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR`, `CVE_2017_11882_ACTIVATION_RELATED`, and `RTF_OBJUPDATE` heuristics strongly suggests that the embedded OLE object is designed to trigger this vulnerability. This allows for arbitrary code execution upon opening the document.

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 2 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Embedded OLE object medium RTF_OBJEMB
    RTF contains \objemb — embedded OLE object

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00000121.bin
c60cf694aa9e5f19082ad0d492d2581b8427a846de459fec6b96a59ed4189b11		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x121 3536 bytes
objdata_01_off0000013a.bin
af48329f28ce0a930c5da200ce5628094ac6518cbbb8475978a5d6637c32965c		 rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x13A 36 bytes

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