Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 21a0f0b2fe48d9be…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: a92155a38774f4b38bf46bc97225beff SHA-1: 1387c4aedb6f64fa40435869440763b91fd6c60e SHA-256: 21a0f0b2fe48d9beab4040b75d7986e701f6b6b7d0d21e3f5cd04faafc7663e3
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA image parsing. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit delivery. The embedded URLs, while not directly malicious, are associated with the XFA structure. The primary attack vector is likely user interaction with the malicious PDF, leading to the exploitation of the vulnerability and potential execution of further malicious code.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
957cc8cb70f2be19b665614b75dec9c26b957223d612cc3f16351653b914576a		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101381 bytes

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