Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 29c542ed7ca712e1…

MALICIOUS

PDF

111.1 KB
MD5: 15514498befdafab7c2b5db08c960e5d SHA-1: 4ba405d9fa70930f0627976670fbfda2aa34a55c SHA-256: 29c542ed7ca712e1fe10c74a2c09735d2539b2fa6d85e483a5c5d8718fcfc8b5
248 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.007 Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript

The file is a PDF document that leverages the CVE-2010-0188 exploit targeting Adobe Reader's XFA functionality. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within the XFA form, which is likely responsible for executing the exploit. ClamAV detections further confirm its malicious nature, identifying it as Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0 and an extracted artifact as Js.Exploit.HTML-27. The embedded script is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload.

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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • 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_00000238.bin
565cb232375d53136d5d75ececb208b7a3b41b7646ffa922357c44b3622d9c76
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x238 113023 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Js.Exploit.HTML-27
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely