Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 210cef087866d7d3…

MALICIOUS

PDF

59.1 KB
MD5: 5ece28cdfa35c6567d1c234de45d8da7 SHA-1: 1eee4a0c3966923849fa44321c0a6de6985f2bd3 SHA-256: 210cef087866d7d381417b539215a1472ff32e89b439c79753150312a041a728
256 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is designed to execute arbitrary code. The ClamAV detection name 'Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-93' further confirms its malicious nature. The embedded script, though obfuscated, appears to be responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 9

  • Adobe Reader LibTIFF XFA image exploit — CVE-2010-0188 critical CVE likely CVE_2010_0188
    PDF contains the CVE-2010-0188 exploit template: XFA JavaScript heap-spray setup, a generated TIFF image payload, and assignment of that TIFF data to an XFA image field rawValue to trigger Adobe Reader's LibTIFF parser.
  • XFA form contains executable script high CVE related PDF_XFA_SCRIPT
    PDF embeds an XFA form whose dataset contains a <script> or <xfa:script> block — XFA scripting has been the exploit primitive for several Adobe Reader RCEs (CVE-2010-0188 family, CVE-2018-4901, and others). Plain XFA without scripts is far less risky.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-93 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-93
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • Embedded script payload in PDF stream medium 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 medium 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 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
  • 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
8f65f2971b7e8a10780c227fb354fe2708aaf579c2ef217ca7f7b22cb3923257
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 59753 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).