Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 156da77a980c3d7b…

MALICIOUS

PDF

30.9 KB
MD5: 8ee42958d34860d4a7e545ddefb1fa0f SHA-1: 35af2bf67aa47f912938c6f85191561d57bcec20 SHA-256: 156da77a980c3d7b591d160551c0ffd72c81aafb42e97ffcbc84fb59dd09b8bd
186 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.007 JavaScript T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment

The PDF sample contains XFA forms with executable JavaScript, indicated by PDF_EVAL, PDF_UNESCAPE, and PDF_XFA_SCRIPT heuristics. The embedded JavaScript is likely designed to download and execute a second-stage payload, as suggested by the ML_NYX_PDF_MALICIOUS classification and the presence of an embedded file artifact. The benign Adobe and XFA URLs do not appear to be directly involved in the malicious execution.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 9

  • XFA form contains risky executable script high CVE related PDF_XFA_SCRIPT
    PDF embeds an XFA form whose script block contains exploit, submission/launch, or shell-execution primitives. Ordinary LiveCycle print/update scripts are left as generic XFA/JS signals unless stronger behavior is present.
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • unescape() call high PDF_UNESCAPE
    unescape() found — often used to decode shellcode in PDF JS exploits
  • Embedded file low PDF_EMBEDDED
    PDF embeds a file attachment — could carry an executable or another weaponised document as a nested payload
  • XFA form low PDF_XFA
    PDF uses XML Forms Architecture — can contain script logic
  • String.fromCharCode low PDF_FROMCHARCODE
    String.fromCharCode found — used to construct payload strings dynamically. Common in benign JavaScript libraries for codepoint manipulation, so this alone is informational; weaponised use is also caught by the dedicated fromCharCode-stage and exploit-shape rules.
  • Embedded script payload in PDF stream low PDF_EMBEDDED_SCRIPT_PAYLOAD
    PDF stream bytes contain an HTML/XFA <script> tag without accompanying Windows shell-execution primitives — common in accessible XFA forms but worth surfacing for analyst review.
  • 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.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://ns.adobe.com/xdp/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
ae598aeb055339f5aeaa8ad2d4b1addbdd40c746d87d675caccddefba62733f9
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 30902 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 4 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).