Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 229d7a0f96010c2a…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: 01ef153311c98c6ba3b2ea0373d3b711 SHA-1: ecfdc6b914e86d20b05dcb5a125c01003b03a958 SHA-256: 229d7a0f96010c2a9b68ea095379c5942524502ec2c4bce1a4ef2acaad72aa1d
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The embedded script payload within the XFA form is likely responsible for executing arbitrary code. While no specific family is identified, the exploit targets client execution.

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
73d1d8debfb39726899b612ef5022449c5cf37b3528842550d8f2e78f38d6f5b
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101339 bytes