Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 21fa538fa45c1464…

MALICIOUS

PDF

112.2 KB
MD5: 39b68f281cf3603f12b4d386990ec6b1 SHA-1: 804baab79bac88c4658ffcfb231e0ed2caae5699 SHA-256: 21fa538fa45c14641dbe9ed6ffe0ba9b4fd6dcc82283be70398ba8582a9ce1fb
248 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains XFA (XML Forms Architecture) which is known to be a vector for exploits. Specifically, the 'PDF_XFA_HEAP_SPRAY' and 'CVE_2010_0188' heuristics indicate the exploitation of a heap spray vulnerability in Adobe Reader via the LibTIFF component. This exploit is designed to execute arbitrary code, likely to download and run a second-stage payload. No specific malware family was identified, but the exploit technique is clear.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • XFA JavaScript heap-spray exploit code critical PDF_XFA_HEAP_SPRAY
    PDF contains XFA script content with heap-spray or shellcode-like JavaScript markers such as large encoded word sequences, util.pack, large arrays, or spray variable names. This is a weaponised Adobe Reader exploit pattern, not a normal interactive form.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0
  • 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.
  • 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_pdf_script_0000023b.bin
39924101c13d98224a41bd1e07fbdf145f0fcf6169a400d262cc5cd80673d791
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x23B 114171 bytes