Malicious RTF / .DOC — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f7b5469bae542308…

MALICIOUS

RTF / .DOC

1.32 MB First seen: 2023-08-30
MD5: 6a66871f0790e4c8e94088f2cee07289 SHA-1: fa8c60cba03118c59776bc1a68bef8c7b3d7229d SHA-256: f7b5469bae542308de9556034db59bc5e103947d58c2fc3055eddcf435d85f62
262 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious File

The RTF document contains an OLE object that leverages the Equation Editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882) to execute a payload. The presence of a high-entropy, decoded OLE1 object strongly indicates the exploitation of this known vulnerability. The embedded object likely contains a second-stage payload, although its specific nature could not be determined from static analysis alone.

Heuristics 7

  • Equation Editor OLE1 native payload — CVE-2017-11882 related critical CVE related CVE_2017_11882_RELATED
    RTF decodes to an OLE1 Equation.3 embedded object whose native data is large and payload-like, and \objupdate requests automatic activation. This is the delivery shape used by Equation Editor RCE documents such as CVE-2017-11882/CVE-2018-0802, but the malformed MTEF record needed for exact attribution was not recovered.
  • Decoded Equation Editor payload + PE critical RTF_EQUATION_EDITOR
    RTF decodes to an Equation Editor ProgID adjacent to OLE activation and the same decoded object stream contains embedded PE bytes. This matches the Equation Editor exploit surface used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 documents, while requiring payload evidence to avoid flagging benign Equation references.
  • 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.
  • Large hex data blocks in OLE object high RTF_EXCESSIVE_HEX
    RTF contains ~1382KB of hex-encoded data inside \objdata sections — may hide a payload
  • OLE object data medium RTF_OBJDATA
    RTF contains 1 \objdata section(s) — embedded OLE objects
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
objdata_00_off00000097.bin
f2ca5b16d42437ca6c8cc1825b7bee14abddf82bd05f925dde7046fcd90eee11
rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x97 691217 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact entropy is 7.99, consistent with packed or encrypted content.