Malicious RTF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 fa2b34f8e4f2a747…

MALICIOUS

RTF

3.6 KB First seen: 2018-11-13
MD5: ca0526e7e9709c5e5ce4784f81e3679c SHA-1: 974a77c302eaea80bea301f8f9deebd92aa167cc SHA-256: fa2b34f8e4f2a747e57059ba43c9c9bdb63817193441277c97633a63f08e1226
180 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The RTF document contains an embedded OLE object that leverages the Equation Editor component. Heuristics indicate a critical finding related to CVE-2017-11882, suggesting the object is designed to execute arbitrary code. The presence of the `EQuaTION.3` ProgID is a strong indicator of this exploit.

Heuristics 5

  • Split hex Equation Editor ProgID + OLE object critical CVE likely 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.
  • 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.
  • \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
  • 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_off0000003b.bin rtf-objdata-decoded RTF \objdata at offset 0x3B 1806 bytes
SHA-256: 3bfbfc3d98447bbaf027bb08d6c2dcab4d3c349c81fc921ee55037e6284c9f35

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